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(12/10/15 4:07am)
One student at the stress forum last Wednesday said that the goal while pursuing a degree at Middlebury is to optimize the experience. That means finding the “perfect” balance between schoolwork, clubs, and social time. It means if I don’t maximize my daily activities, I might lose out on what I could’ve done.
It seems that students here are too concerned with doing to engage in the act of being. It has become all about making deadlines, attending talks, and optimizing our schedules. The search to maximize every aspect of each day becomes an obsessive hobby. We get a rush when we cross off the next item on our to-do list. It feels good to have things in control.
But soon the task becomes our master. When the measure of a good day in the library is how productive we are, we think of ourselves more as robots than as people. The time we spend on things becomes an equation to be solved. In our search for efficiency we become machine.
When we get caught up in the activities and tasks and things which we can say “I did,” we lose sight of what it means to be here. The residential liberal arts college is a space where shared learning occurs at all hours of the day and all corners of campus. What, then, if we took four years of residency here for what they are? What if we could decide our days’ events not around the tasks we have to do but around the people we wish to see, the meals we wish to have, and the stories we wish to hear? I think then we would be happy.
We students are the most populous part of the community. We are roommates, teammates, and classmates to each other; we are neighbors in the physical makeup of the campus. At its heart, the residential liberal arts college offers a mutual living–learning experience. In our inherent proximity, we have the opportunity to interact and flourish together. We should focus not on doing more but on living with meaning, which comes from community, collaboration, and coexistence.
When we begin to realize each of us is interconnected, when we take ownership of our collective experience and realize our individual gain in doing things is far less meaningful than our collective power in living together, then we have embraced a culture of being. There is no conflict because your living is part of mine. And with that realization, all our individual struggles become one.
(12/02/15 10:34pm)
Residents of the “First World” often look at the newspaper and see all kinds of horrific injustices and tragedies happening all over the world. There’s a feeling of helplessness in the way we discuss the problems of the day that are distant from our own homes. We usually just shake our heads in dismay and say, “This is awful, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
But sometimes you actually can do something about it, whether you know it or not. As Travis Sanderson ’19 pointed out in his op-ed from last week, “A Call for Conscience,” we as students at an elite American college have an exceptional opportunity to do our part for Syrian refugees.
We attend a school with a rapidly increasing $1.1 billion endowment. What can we do with that money to help Syrian refugees? Sanderson outlined two important things our school can do to help, but in case you missed it, I will summarize them below:
1. We can partially subsidize the tuition of Syrian refugee students at universities in the Middle East – such as the University of Jordan – with whom we already have a close partnership and a study abroad school.
2. We can offer scholarships and cover transportation costs for Syrian refugee students to come to our campus.
The first option is relatively cheap and easy, both for our administration and for the refugee students. We would have to do nothing more than send money to the University of Jordan for the purpose of scholarships for refugees. As Sanderson points out, a year of tuition at the University of Jordan costs 16,000 Jordanian dinars, or about $22,560 USD, which means that paying for a quarter of one student’s tuition would only be about $5,640 per year. Plus, there are already 619,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. This option makes a lot of practical sense.
One might then ask, if the first option is so much easier and cheaper, why even consider actually bringing a Syrian student here to campus? I argue that bringing even just a few Syrian refugee students here would make a huge difference for the students, for us and for American higher education as a whole. The Syrian students would bring us their unique perspectives on the world, having firsthand experience with violence in Syria and xenophobia abroad. We would provide them with safety, community and a first-rate education. By meeting and becoming friends with these students and having them be a part of our close-knit community, we would all have a better understanding of refugees as human beings, rather than as statistics in a newspaper.
Most importantly, however, we would be setting an example for colleges and universities all across the United States. Middlebury is no stranger to setting examples for the rest of the country to follow. In 1823, we set an example by becoming the first institution to give a bachelor’s degree to an African-American. We set examples in language instruction with our world-renowned language schools and our Doctor of Modern Languages degree. Today, we continue to set examples with our commitment to sustainability and becoming carbon-neutral by 2016. Middlebury is a pioneer among American institutions of higher education, so it’s only fitting that we should be one of the first institutions to majorly welcome Syrian refugees to our campus. When we do so, hopefully other colleges and universities will follow suit.
(10/21/15 8:38pm)
For five decades Middlebury College has been an outstanding leader in promoting environmental studies and international studies and in adopting sustainable operating procedures. Laurie Patton has shared with me her commitment as the College’s new president to build on and extend this admirable record of leadership. Toward this end, she would like to work in partnership with trustees, student groups, and concerned faculty and staff in an effort to identify next steps. This is a sound approach that all in the College community can support. Regarding next steps, this letter highlights one especially significant opportunity. We are at a pivotal moment in the national and international debate over the urgent need for a transition to a clean energy economy. Middlebury has the ability to influence the outcome of this critical debate by taking a public stand with a commitment to join the growing fossil fuel divestment movement. A decision by the College to divest should be viewed primarily as an act of moral and educational leadership at a time when industrial-technological civilization has lost its way and must reinvent itself.
I write this letter as a former Middlebury faculty member who taught at the College for close to three decades, served as dean of the college in the Olin Robison administration, and chaired the College’s Environmental Council during the mid-1990s. My courses included the study of environmental ethics, global ethics, and religion and ecology. I also write as a trustee and former chair of the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), an international grant making foundation that has joined the fossil fuel divestment movement as part of an effort to align its investment policy with its mission and program goals. The Divest Middlebury campaign has set forth a compelling argument, and I write in support of the students who are leading this important initiative.
Scientists working in the field of climate change have turned on the alarm bells. Human development practices, especially the burning of fossil fuels, are altering the conditions on Earth that have made possible the development of civilization over the past ten thousand years. If humanity does not act with all deliberate speed and reduce its global greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, the consensus among scientists is that the ecological, economic and social damage and disruption could be catastrophic and irreversible. The most vulnerable are the hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, but no one’s life will be unaffected. Already the negative effects of climate change are being felt by communities around the world. In addition, human development patterns have caused a tragic decline in the planet’s biodiversity and natural beauty, and ongoing global warming will accelerate this process.
Since action on climate change is about preventing immense harm and promoting the common good, it is first and foremost a fundamental moral issue. With the risk of dangerous consequences growing with every day of delayed action, it is also an extraordinarily urgent moral challenge. In a recent declaration, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican in Rome stated the matter succinctly: “Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its mitigation is a moral and religious imperative.” A growing chorus of religious leaders, including Pope Francis, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the Dalai Lama, fully support this view. The new Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis on the environment, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home,” and the Pope’s addresses before Congress and the United Nations clearly and forcefully highlight the ethical and spiritual dimensions of the environmental crisis and climate change. In response to the initiative of Pope Francis, 333 Rabbis have signed a “Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis.”
This year could be a turning point when the world community forms the necessary global partnership and commits to the collaborative action needed to reduce and eliminate carbon pollution. In December heads of state from the 193 governments that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will meet in Paris to finalize a long delayed, legally binding climate change agreement. The goal of the negotiations is to elicit commitments that will cumulatively prevent global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era. Achieving an effective and equitable agreement in Paris is fundamental to protecting Earth’s ecological integrity, promoting human rights, and fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations. However, again and again governments controlled by short term economic and political interests have failed to address the problem of global warming. Building pressure from civil society, including from leaders in science, religion, education and philanthropy, can make a critical difference.
With the demand for change growing, governments are searching for a way forward. China and the United States, the two largest carbon polluters, have together made meaningful commitments, and many other nations have joined them. However, the commitments made to date fall far short of the reduction in emissions needed. At a special summit meeting on sustainable development this past September, the United Nations issued a path breaking declaration on “Transforming Our World” that adopts seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets, which envision the full integration of the environmental, economic and social dimensions of the sustainable development agenda. The SDGs call for radical change, and if governments are serious about achieving the SDGs, a strong UNFCCC agreement is mandatory. By joining the divestment movement, Middlebury College can help to send that message and register its concern that governments be held accountable for fulfilling their obligations under the agreement and expand their commitments in the future as necessary.
The divestment movement has grown dramatically over the past year. A recent study, which was commissioned by the Wallace Global Fund, has found that 436 institutions have made a commitment to divest from fossil fuel companies, representing $2.6 trillion of investments—a fifty-fold increase. These institutions include the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and two of the largest pension funds as well as foundations, colleges, universities, NGOs and religious institutions. Recognizing the significance of these developments, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, has called for more institutions to divest from fossil fuels and invest in clean energy as a way to build momentum going into the Paris climate change meeting. (Clarification regarding the $2.6 trillion of investments is needed, because in some cases the institutions involved are limiting their divestment to coal or to coal and tar sands oil or to some but not all fossil fuels companies.)
College and University trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that their institution has the financial resources to fulfill its educational mission, and they are rightly concerned to maximize returns on endowment investments and minimize risk. In pursuing its commitment to divest from fossil fuels, the RBF has adopted a phased approach, eliminating investments in coal and tar sands first followed by a gradual elimination of all fossil fuels in a fiscally responsible manner. The goal of the RBF is to be completely divested of fossil fuels by the end of 2017. The Fund’s trustees have not found it necessary to alter their long standing commitment to preserve the purchasing power of the endowment. Middlebury should be able to divest from fossil fuels over several years without suffering reduced investment returns. Moreover, divesting could produce higher returns, because the fossil fuel energy sector is facing complex problems and risks. In addition to the precipitous collapse in the price of oil over the past year, which has caused some firms significant loses in market value, the big oil companies face the long term problem of stranded assets. Preventing global warming from exceeding two degrees Celsius will require leaving most of the known coal, oil, and gas reserves in the ground. In short, the transition to a clean energy economy will in all likelihood make fossil fuels a high risk investment. Many financial institutions are following this situation closely, and the Carbon Tracker Initiative is providing investors with the tools to measure economic risk associated with fossil fuels.
It is also important to recognize that renewable energy is rapidly becoming competitive with fossil fuels on cost and that corporations are coming to the realization that cutting their carbon footprint through improved efficiency and a shift to renewables is both possible and profitable. There is a global coalition of corporations that have committed to the long term goal of operating entirely with renewable energy. The New York Times reports that among the companies that have recently joined the coalition are Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks, and Walmart. The transition away from fossil fuels to renewables is underway in spite of efforts by the big oil companies to prevent it and deny it. The only question is whether the transition will happen fast enough to prevent global warming from pushing the biosphere over tipping points that involve high risk. In a September Op-Ed, the president of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, announced that his global industrial manufacturing company has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030, and reflecting on the challenge and opportunity before the business community he writes: “We have the technologies, we have the business incentive, and we have the responsibility. Now all we need is the commitment.” A decision by Middlebury’s board to divest will reinforce this message to corporate leaders, many of whom are listening with a new level of concern for the future of the planet, the global economy, and their companies.
Some argue that it is hypocritical for an institution like Middlebury to divest when the college and American society at large continue to be dependent on fossil fuels in so many ways. Is it hypocritical for someone who is addicted to cigarettes but knows that smoking is harmful and cancer causing to divest from all tobacco company stocks? Divesting is a way to help all of us wake up to the real dangers created by our addiction to fossil fuels and make the change to a cleaner, safer, more secure world.
When the RBF board and its investment committee, which includes both trustees and outside experts, began to consider joining the divestment movement, they were working with a highly skilled and successful investment manager. However, given the way its operations were structured, the investment manager concluded that it could not accomplish the goals that the RBF had set for divestment. Consequently the Fund was forced to change investment managers. Making the change has been a demanding process, but it has worked out well and the Fund now has investment managers with the expertise and flexibility that it requires. In short, there are very good alternatives, if Middlebury finds itself contending with the same kind of problem that faced the RBF.
Apart from major educational issues, as a general rule, it is not the responsibility of a college board of trustees to consider taking an official position on the many issues under debate on campus, and only under exceptional circumstances when there are very compelling moral reasons to do so should a board use divestment to support a protest movement. However, climate change is not just one environmental issue among many others or just a political issue. It is one of the defining issues of our time, and the choices made in response to the challenge will profoundly affect the lives of all Middlebury students and the future of life on Earth.
Middlebury College is a highly respected leader internationally in the field of education and a decision by its president and board of trustees to join the expanding fossil fuel divestment movement will be an act of responsible global citizenship consistent with its mission. It will have a significant impact, inspiring other institutions to support the transition to a clean energy economy and contributing to the outcome we all hope for in Paris.
Steven C. Rockefeller
Professor Emeritus of Religion
Middlebury College
October 12, 2015
Steven C. Rockefeller has had a career as a scholar and teacher, an environmental conservationist, and a philanthropist. His research, writing, and teaching have been focused on the fields of religion, philosophy and ethics. He has had a special interest in the transition to a sustainable future and the development of a relational spirituality and a global ethic for building a just, sustainable and peaceful world community.
Professor Rockefeller is professor emeritus of religion at Middlebury College, Vermont, where he taught from 1970 to 1998 and also served as dean of the college and chair of the religion department. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University in 1958, his master of divinity from Union Theological Seminary in 1963, and his doctorate in the philosophy of religion from Columbia University in 1973. He is the author of John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (Columbia, 1991; Peking University, 2009) and Democratic Equality, Economic Inequality, and the Earth Charter (Earth Charter International, 2015). He is the co-editor of two books of essays, The Christ and the Bodhisattva (SUNY, 1987) and Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment is a Religious Issue (Beacon, 1992). His other publications include over fifty essays that appear in a variety of books and journals.
Professor Rockefeller and Professor John Elder organized and directed at Middlebury College in 1990 the Spirit and Nature Symposium that included the Dalai Lama and was filmed by Bill Moyers for public television. In the mid-1990s, Professor Rockefeller chaired the Middlebury College Environmental Council. Under his leadership, the Council prepared and submitted to the College president “Pathways to a Green Campus” (1995), a comprehensive environmental report on the state of the college with 22 recommendations. Professor Rockefeller served as president of the Demeter Fund, which created the Charlotte Park and Wildlife Refuge in Vermont overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. He is the founding president of the Otter Creek Child Care Center in Middlebury, Vermont.
For over thirty years Professor Rockefeller has served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an international foundation with grantmaking programs in democratic practice, sustainable development, and peacebuilding. From 1998 to 2006 he chaired the RBF board of trustees. Among the other boards and commissions on which he has served are the National Commission on the Environment (organized by the World Wildlife Fund), the National Audubon Society, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Council of the UN mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Over the past two decades, Professor Rockefeller has been actively involved in the Earth Charter Initiative, which in and through extensive worldwide, cross cultural dialogue has endeavored to identify and articulate shared values that provide an ethical foundation for the emerging global community. From 1997 to 2000, he chaired the Earth Charter international drafting committee for the Earth Charter Commission. A final version of the Earth Charter—a declaration of global interdependence and universal responsibility with fundamental principles for creating a just, sustainable and peaceful world—was launched by the Earth Charter Commission at the Peace Palace in The Hague in 2000. From 2000 to 2010, Professor Rockefeller served as co-chair of the Earth Charter International (ECI) Council. The ECI Secretariat is based at the University for Peace in Costa Rica and has affiliates in 73 different countries. The Earth Charter has been translated into over 40 languages and endorsed by over 5,000 organizations globally, including UNESCO and the World Conservation Congress of IUCN.
Professor Rockefeller lives with his wife, Professor Barbara Bellows Rockefeller, in Pound Ridge, New York.
(10/14/15 6:53pm)
According to Middlebury’s CCI website, LinkedIn is the key to controlling our professional online identity. “LinkedIn profiles rise to the top of search results from sites such as Google, letting you control that first impression.”
So having a LinkedIn profile forces potential employers to troll a little longer to find that embarrassing drunk photo or Facebook post, but what about its value as a professional networking tool? Does a friend endorsing your “Microsoft Excel” skills really mean much to job recruiters?
Of the 121 students we surveyed on their LinkedIn experience, 18% of respondents said that they found job opportunities through the site. Only 6% of respondents actually got the job. With these kinds of results, it is perhaps of no surprise that for some Middlebury students, “Let’s connect on LinkedIn” often comes off as an ironic joke rather than a genuine interest in professional networking. This week, The Campus investigates the value of LinkedIn for the Middlebury student. Is LinkedIn’s popularity all hype and peer pressure or are these student skeptics neglecting the true benefits of the site?
LinkedIn’s Rapid Global Growth
LinkedIn was launched in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, an American entrepreneur who had previously been on Paypal’s board of directors. In 2004, it attracted an impressive 120,000 members. By 2014, it had grown into a global network amassing over 332,000,000 members. As society becomes increasingly connected through technology, rather than face-to-face interaction, it seems only natural that professional networks move online as well.
Despite this societal trend and those impressive membership figures, creating and maintaining a LinkedIn profile can often seem fruitless in terms of actual job offers. The numbers don’t lie; the network is huge, but is it active?
“I’m connected to more than 1,000 people on LinkedIn, but a quick trip to my LinkedIn home page suggests that on any given day, there are probably fewer than 25 people – or 2.5% – that are actively engaged,” wrote Dave Kurlan, author of the Top Sales and Marketing Blog of 2011-2014, “to me, the phone is looking better and better every day.”
Garrett Griffin ’16 is a computer science and Chinese double major was recently recruited by both Google and the CIA via LinkedIn. Even he is still not sold on the site’s usefulness in professional networking.
“I’m jaded about a lot of technology. A lot of it is excessive and unnecessary and I thought LinkedIn just fell into that category. Like Facebook, it appeared as a social media space that doesn’t offer you much more than being a somewhat more formal way of interacting with people that isn’t email,” said Griffin. Initially skeptical, his mom ended up creating his profile last summer so he could keep in touch with the co-workers he had met on his internship with Amazon in Seattle.
Though he now admits his LinkedIn membership ended up being a “pretty good thing”, Griffin still hesitates to recommend the site to his friends, especially those who are not interested in working for internet savvy companies that actively recruit on LinkedIn. “I wouldn’t recommend it to my friends who are looking for say, jobs in art galleries,” he said.
Further, some students tend to shy away from LinkedIn because they are unsure who they want to connect with. For English major Julia Haas ’17, “LinkedIn seems like [a site for] someone who’s looking for a very specific career, and as someone who has no concept of what my major could lead to, I don’t think it’d worthwhile for me. It just seems a connection maker, and I have no idea what kind of connections I’m trying to make.”
LinkedIn Beyond Networking: A Powerful Research Tool?
In response to this skepticism, CCI career advisor Tracy Himmel Isham insists LinkedIn is much more than just a professional network. For students not yet interested in networking, it has the potential to be an efficient way to research companies and careers.
“Say you want to know a little more about social impact consulting, there’s over a 100,000 companies that have put profiles in here.” The company profile features a short mission statement, how they self-identify, their website as a live link, and their specialties listed in keywords.
“It’s all about algorithms, it’s all about keywords,” she said. “LinkedIn is phenomenal for research. Just to give you an idea, I went through and kept clicking through company profiles [based on the “People Also Viewed” feature] on social impact consulting,” she said. Using these profiles, she wrote short company summaries. This document spanned 22 pages. “There’s so much information you can trove out of this. For me, that’s the most exciting part,” she said.
Isham described the Student Jobs section of the website, featuring only entry-level and internship positions, as a personalized MiddNet [alumni database] and MOJO [Middlebury Online Job Opportunities site], combined. Through the use of Advanced Search, members can search keywords, such as Middlebury College and a company name, to see if any alumni work there. They can also filter alumni based on the industry they work in, their skills, and the city where they work. Say, you were interested in working in the San Francisco Bay area in the renewables sector and wanted to connect with relevant Middlebury alumnae. The advanced search feature allows you to do that.
“What’s cool about this [search feature on LinkedIn] is it’s not just a list of names,” she said as she clicked on an alumni’s profile in the Renewables sector. “Now I can go in and see what their trajectory has been. I can see that he’s risen through the company and where he worked before, his major, his class year and where he got his graduate degree,” Isham said.
Making (Valuable) Connections
As MiddNet becomes somewhat obsolete, LinkedIn could become more helpful to current students looking for a familiar hand up into a competitive industry. “I think the younger generation of alums are on LinkedIn more often than MiddNet,” Isham said, “MiddNet is a great source; there’s a ton of alumni on it. But LinkedIn is where I try to make [student-alum] connections happen.”
Though Isham believes LinkedIn can be a useful career tool for all students, she does not recommend students upgrade to a premium account. “I think there’s a ton you can do [without Premium],” she said. This is one reason why she advises students to avoid joining multiple groups where one has no personal affiliation, i.e. interest groups that can over-broaden their search results. Without the Premium filter, it can be near impossible to sort out which people are within a connection’s reach.
In addition to joining groups selectively, Isham suggested being careful with who students connect with and how they connect with them. Although the number of LinkedIn connections is boldly displayed on every profile, she insists it is more important to have high quality connections, rather than a large quantity.
“[In an invitation], my advice is tell people why you want to connect, because then it becomes personal. For me, if I get people who want to connect and they’re just a part of some green group I’m also a part of, and they send me the boiler plate invitation, I ignore them,” she said. Instead of directly sending strangers an invitation to connect, Isham suggests students try to find a mutual connection to introduce them.
“What’s cool about LinkedIn is if someone you know is asking you to connect, your chances are going to be 50% higher,” she said. “The more connections you have, the deeper you can go. If you connect to me, you have a way to connect to all of my connections,” she said.
She recalled connecting a student interested in the sustainable food industry who wanted to work in the new Provisions department for Patagonia. “I know someone [at Patagonia] who is a sustainability person, an alum who I used to work with on climate stuff,” she said. “I introduced them and they kept me in the conversation for the first couple back-and-forths. It was brilliant. They totally connected.”
(09/17/15 10:54pm)
Less than five miles from the College, one company is working to transport the benefits of Vermont agriculture to urban millennials across the United States.
A few years ago, Cam MacKugler ’09 was housesitting at a dairy farm in Middlebury when he had an epiphany. As he pulled weeds from the fertile soil, the former architecture major asked himself how he could simplify gardening for people who have no money, no time and no space. A few minutes later, he had sketched his first Seedsheet.
Today, MacKugler is the Founder and CEO of Cloudfarm, a company focused on designing products that allow anyone to experience the boon of a homegrown harvest. Cloudfarm’s first product is the Seedsheet, a woven polypropylene cloth interspersed with seedpods, perfectly spaced to ensure that a healthy garden will grow. The cloth separating the seedpods means that no weeding is necessary; the cloth only needs to be placed on top of soil and watered occasionally.
Seedsheet’s website describes the product as an “agricultural paint by numbers.”
“We are basically 3-D printing a garden and shipping it to you,” said MacKugler.
Handmade in Vermont and containing non-GMO Vermont seeds and soil, Seedsheets wear the tagline ‘Made in Vermont, proudly.'
So far, Cloudfarm and its unique Seedsheet have had impressive success. The company was launched on Kickstarter in November 2014 and in one month, Cloudfarm raised $30,664 from donations, a remarkable number considering that most Kickstarter cam- paigns raise less than $10,000. Investors, many of them local Vermonters in the agricultural sector, contacted MacKugler before the donation period had even closed.
Since producing their first Seedsheet on May 21, 2015, sales have been steadily increasing despite the fact that the true growing season, spring, is still months away. “It’s not a tough sell,” MacKugler explained. A 2014 report by the National Garden Association found that millennials (age 18 to 34) were the fastest growing population segment of food gardeners. Millennials spent an all-time high of $1.2 billion on food gardening in 2013.
Today, Cloudfarm sells 16 different types of Seedsheets — from flower Seedsheets to tea Seedsheets to “green smoothie” Seedsheets containing a variety of leafy greens — in five sizes ranging from a flower box to a large garden.
Recently, the innovative Seedsheet has been grabbing attention from media outlets and retailers alike. The Seedsheet was featured by USA Today, Fast Company, and Vice. In addition, the Home Depot agreed to sell Seedsheets online, and on September 24, Zulily will begin online sales, as well.
In the future, Cloudfarm hopes to expand to sell customizable Seedsheets, allowing consumers to mix-and-match any number of plants to grow, and to sell commercial Seedsheets large enough for a farmer to roll out over his fields.
Regardless of the company’s rapid growth and popularity, Cloudfarm is still committed to keeping its “Plant 1 Pledge 1” program that began during its Kickstarter campaign. “Plant 1 Pledge 1” gives investors an option to donate one Seedsheet to a school. True to its mission of making gardening simple for everyone, Cloudfarm is continuing this program and will feature a donation option on its website in the future.
MacKugler advised students of the College looking to replicate his entrepreneurial success to “use whatever means to prove early stage validation.” He suggested that entrepreneurs show their product to friends and investors for feedback that could be valuable.
“I definitely would be the biggest advocate for the liberal arts degree in the entrepreneurial world because every day you’re transitioning from building sales Excel files to coming up with a logo design,” he said.
MacKugler spoke to a Middview trip last weekend at the Cloudfarm offices, giving them similar advice. This summer, he hosted nine summer interns, including five Middlebury students: Caroline Guiot ’16, Katherine Chamberlain ’16, Rob Cone ’17, Mary Sackbauer ’15 and Dylan McGarthwaite ’15.
Guiot and Chamberlain agreed that interning at Cloudfarm taught them many lessons about entrepreneurship and founding a start-up.
“Sometimes you just need to start,” said Guiot of what she learned from interning at Cloudfarm. “Your idea or vision might not be perfected but you can be stuck in the design stage forever and you can learn a lot about just by starting.”
“I think the biggest take away was that start-ups are a ton of work!” Chamberlain said. “I also learned how rewarding it is to see an idea turn into a legitimate business.”
MacKugler says he is going to continue to provide opportunities for stu- dents of the College to experience en- trepreneurship at Cloudfarm all year round.
(04/08/15 10:02pm)
In honor of 100 years of commitment to foreign languages, the Middlebury Language School will celebrate its centennial with a special weekend of cultural events, lectures and panels on July 15 to 17. The wide assortment of activities, speakers and performances are open to all Middlebury students as well as to the Middlebury community.
In 1915, founder of the College’s first language school, Lillian Stroebe, was on a train from Burlington to Rutland when she spotted the College’s campus situated on a picturesque hill. The isolation and beauty of the College was the ideal place for Stroebe to employ her vision of beginning an immersive German language school. Stroebe presented her idea to the College’s administration, and they agreed to devote the summer months of Middlebury’s campus to learning foreign languages. The concept quickly expanded with the addition of French and Spanish to the German language school in 1916 and 1917.
Although Stroebe’s idea is now 100 years old, her philosophy and commitment to fostering a community of global learners remains pertinent, critical and the guide to Middlebury’s current language programs.
Director of the German school, Bettina Matthias, attests to the ingenuity of Stroebe’s idea that prevails today.
“The original idea and implementation was visionary and ahead of its time both pedagogically and intellectually,” she wrote in an email. “The Language Schools have a sort of magic that has really helped us stay so strong, and I firmly believe that it is and will be one of the foundations of a healthy future.”
Today, Middlebury Language Schools have an impressive global reach and influence. After beginning with only one language and 47 students, the program now has expanded to included eleven languages and has had over 50,000 students, with 12,000 students earning degrees.
Studies have shown that students of Middlebury Language Schools develop greater language proficiency after one summer of attendance than after a semester, and sometimes even a year, abroad. Students of the language schools not only acquire fluency, they also develop deep bonds with their peers and instructors that are reinforced by a mutual commitment to a summer of complete immersion.
For over a year, a centennial committee has planned a celebration and conference that will include phenomenal guest speakers, world-renowned cultural performers, delicious dinners and a culminating dance. The conference is divided into five panels themed: Framing the Global Academic Agenda; Language and Identity: Putting Your Self on the Line; Working Without Subtitles; The ‘Secret Sauce’: Selling Global Products in Local Markets; Language Schools 2.0: The Next Century. The Conference is bookended by extraordinary speakers; opening with Management Editor of The Economist, Adrian Wooldridge, and closing with Director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and Middlebury alum and trustee, Frank Sesno.
In addition to providing stimulating panel discussions, the celebration will include cultural performances from language school alums and participants. The final night of the event will culminate in a ball for which attendees are to dress in outfits from the year 1915 that align with the culture of their language.
Following the dance are fireworks. For current students of the language program, the Language Pledge will be suspended when participating in conference events or activities that require the use of English; an exception Michael Geisler, Vice President of the Middlebury Language Schools, asserts he will only make every 100 years.
While the event will acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of the past 100 years, it also highlights the greater objectives of the schools in the future.
Geisler, seeking to put the celebration in a global context, said that the theme of the conference poses a question that goes beyond recognizing the importance of languages and asks why the study of languages is essential.
“A knowledge of the local culture is necessary in order to understand the way in which global issues are articulated, understood and dealt with in different parts of the world,” Geisler said. “This knowledge can only be acquired through knowing the language spoken in that part of the world.”
Geisler hopes to increasingly use technology and social media to improve the Middlebury Language Schools. He sees potential in using technology and social media as a means of creating an online learning environment, which will allow students to take a part of the language school with them as they continue to learn and connect virtually with teachers and peers after the program’s completion.
(04/08/15 3:49pm)
What happens when fur coats, dangerously high heels and babushka headscarves clash with the otherworldly elements of ancient fairytales? This past weekend, the Seeler Studio Theatre of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts was transformed into a fantastical fusion between modern Russian reality and folklore. In the highly-anticipated faculty show The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, which ran from April 2-4, audiences were ushered into a world of evil witches, flying potatoes and hungry bears that magically, horrifyingly coincide with the lives of three girls navigating their way through post-Soviet Moscow.
A finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn playwriting prize of 2012, the play was directed by Assistant Professor of Theatre Alex Draper ’88 and featured an all-female cast of seven students.
The play begins with a candidly bizarre monologue by 19-year-old Russian Masha, played by Lana Meyer ’17. Donning seductive, knee-high red boots with killer heels, Masha offers a tantalizing glimpse into her fantasy-ridden life in Moscow.
“Zhili byli,” she announces dramatically in her opening line, “in Russian means: they lived, they were. Once upon a time.”
This beautifully compact phrase – zhili byli – will echo throughout the rest of the play as the characters encounter various mystical obstacles in the most unexpected of places.
“I was, of course, always dreaming about running away into the forest,” Masha recounts in the story of how she ended up living with a bear. “’Cause that’s where everything good – meaning everything bad – happened.”
Masha’s monologue, delivered in a simultaneously riveting and offhand manner by Meyer, sets the casually outlandish tone that defines much of the play. And so the story – an intersection between peculiar fantasy and starkly honest narrative – is launched.
Set in 2005, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls depicts life in Russia after the breakdown of the strict communist regime. As eager investors flocked to the country in the ’90s, the market went insane. The year 2005 saw the cusp of the economic decline that inevitably followed the huge boom, when there still existed a sort of wonder surrounding the idea of quick riches in Russia. Stories circulated in which dirty vegetable sellers became supermodels overnight. People were enamored by the possibility of jumping from a difficult life into what was essentially a fairytale. Such is the premise of all the fantastical happenings of the play.
19-year-old Annie, the protagonist of the play, grew up in America under the care of her Russian immigrant mother, Olga, played by Kathleen Gudas ’16.5. Portrayed by Katie Weatherseed ’16.5, Annie is wide-eyed, innocent and lovable, voicing aloud all the important, disbelieving questions that allow the audience to keep up with the fast-paced – and at times convoluted – plotline.
Meanwhile, the heavily spray-tanned, tracksuit-clad Olga, whose Russian accent holds strong even after twenty years in the states, expresses disillusion toward her rote and monotonous lifestyle as a hairdresser. Like so many others, she is enchanted by the prospect of rebuilding one’s life in the booming economic hub of Russia, in the magical sense of a modern-day fairytale. And so, because she cannot leave herself, she sends Annie off to her Auntie Yaroslava’s house for the summer, with the hopes that her daughter will reap the fairytale rewards that Olga could have had if she had stayed.
In this way, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls challenges – and perhaps outright rejects – the validity of the traditionally revered American dream. No longer is the story centered on finding prosperity within the United States. Instead, it focuses on returning to the motherland in the aftermath of its revolutionary transformation.
Not everything on the other side of the ocean is rainbows and ponies, however.
“Sleep wis one eye open, baby,” are Olga’s parting words to Annie, as she pins an evil eye on her thick fur coat to ward off dangers that everyone reads about in skazki, old Russian fairytales. Her next comment drew huge laughs from the crowd: “It was dark ages when I receive zis. Literally. In Soviet Union, KGB turns on sun only one hour each day. Zey had switch.”
With these words haunting her mind, Annie sets off to meet her Auntie Yaroslava, played by Gabrielle Owens ’17. Little does Annie know, this kindly old woman is actually the evil witch Baba Yaga in disguise. Wrapped in tattered rags and usually shriveled over in her giant armchair, Baba Yaga is cursed to age one year whenever she is asked a question. As such, she winces painfully nearly every time the curious Annie speaks.
Owens enjoyed the unique challenges that her role presented, as she worked to “find the age of the character without losing any of the physicality or the emotions.”
“It’s sort of like playing the evil stepmother from Cinderella. It’s a very iconic character in Russian folklore who has many different incarnations,” she said. “The fun and challenging part was finding switches between when she is the evil witch and when she is masquerading, or is genuinely, a kind old lady. There are some moments when she really does care for this child. She also wants to eat her, of course, but there is a real person underneath.”
Outside of Auntie Yaroslava’s increasingly creepy apartment, the intersection of fantasy and real world continues, further bending the realm of possibility. Annie befriends three Russian girls with fascinating, albeit slightly concerning, tales of their own: Masha, who complains often of Misha, her (literal) bear of a boyfriend; Katya, the mistress of “the tsar,” as performed coyly by Leah Sarbib ’15.5; and other Katya, the tsar’s beautiful daughter, played by Caitlyn Meagher ’17. She also crosses paths with Nastya, the aloof prostitute, also played by Meagher.
Annie’s bright-eyed naiveté is shattered to some degree as she hesitantly, and comically, smokes her first cigarette, glimpses into a world of whoring and cheating and, in the culminating scenes of the play, grapples with such dangerous weapons as a pestle, ax and giant brick oven. Through it all, Weatherseed does not lose touch of the syrupy-sweetness that drew the audience to her from the beginning. Annie’s optimism may have dimmed, but Weatherseed shines on nevertheless.
Ultimately, it is the dynamism of the cast that makes this production of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls such a riveting one.
“It needs big, bold, visceral, engaged acting,” Draper said.
While some details of the storyline may be lost in the rapid, overwhelming flurry of dialogue, perhaps the play’s greatest strength lies in its humor, which stems from the contrast between the sheer outlandishness of the fantasy and the characters’ reaction to it. For instance, there is no denying that the presence of a bear in place of a human boyfriend is ridiculous. The script capitalizes on that, with Masha making such nonchalant references to “Misha the bear” – Russia’s take on the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood – that Annie initially assumes she is speaking metaphorically.
Brilliantly executed scene transitions brought the audience from one reality to another, traveling from Auntie Yaroslava’s living room to pulsing nightclubs to the streets of Moscow. Through masterful lighting by Resident Scenic and Lighting Designer Hallie Zieselman and the fluid rearrangement of a pair of intricately painted red doors, the stage was transformed time and time again.
According to Draper, the set needed to be “fluid enough to change very quickly and yet contain elements that let the modern, traditional and much older than traditional live in the same kind of space.”
In the bloody mess of relationships that culminates by the end of the play, the mantra is uttered, “This shit happens.” Yet the characters stand strong in the aftermath; some might even describe them as unfazed.
“Nothing was left behind. Just a brick oven full of ashes and the world’s largest vegetarian stew gone cold,” Katya proclaims in the final lines. “There was no sign that Anya Rabinovich had ever stepped foot in apartment 57.”
The haunting end of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls can be encapsulated by a variety of emotions: disillusion, shock, horror, confusion and even amusement. In the post-show discussion on Friday night, some speculated that the Annie’s abrupt departure following the gruesomely violent conclusion could be considered a “Russian happy ending.” After all, no longer will she be implicated in the fantastical dangers lurking around Auntie Yaroslava’s potato piles. Finally, she can feel safe.
The (debatably) dark ending aside, there lies a beauty in the underlying message of the play: that we have the power to shape our own destiny.
“Women who are living in a very sexist society are taking action and carving out their own skazki, making their own stories,” Owens said.
“Recognize when you start being the star of your own story,” Draper added.
The messages behind The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls may sound trite, but its bizarrely outlandish delivery is certainly difficult to forget. People have the tendency to make sense of their lives and justify, excuse and empower themselves with fairytales. This play, in its strange blend of mysticism and realism, is no exception.
(03/04/15 4:51pm)
Though the announcement did not come as a surprise to many, the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) sent out an all-student email on Tuesday, Feb. 24 confirming that rapper and auto-tune extraordinaire T-Pain will headline this year’s spring concert on Saturday, April 18 in the Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena. Known for his mastery of auto-tune as a musical instrument, T-Pain has won two Grammy Awards for collaborations with Jamie Foxx and Kanye West in addition to enjoying multiple top-ten hits like “I’m in Love (With a Stripper),” Chris Brown’s “Kiss Kiss” and Flo Rida’s “Low,” which often competed for the top spot on the charts at the same time. Tickets for the event are on sale to students starting Monday, March 30 at 6 p.m. for $15 through the online box office.
MCAB’s 13-member Concert Committee, which is comprised of students from all grade levels under the leadership of co-chairs Matt Butler ’15 and Katherine Kucharczyk ’16, begins each large concert selection process with a brainstorm to generate about 30 possible artists - some clearly within reach and others less so - to bring to their concert agent, who returns with information about date and price availability for the requested performers and suggests names that fit the College’s specifications. It usually takes three to four meetings for the Committee to come to a consensus about venue, genre and artist.
“We generally try to include diversity in the type of genre to keep the concerts fresh, and we try to get some name recognition to appeal to as many students as possible, but our full mission is to bring high-quality musical acts,” Kucharczyk said.
Despite the Committee’s initial division between a short list of contenders, T-Pain quickly emerged as the best fit. The singer’s tracks, most popular in the late 2000’s, are filled with his now trademark use of auto-tune and references to the club, women and, most prominently, drinking. Though his first album was just released in 2007, the artist’s latest 2014 album is the aptly titled T-Pain Presents Happy Hour: The Greatest Hits, featuring hits like “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” and “Blame It (On the Alcohol).”
“Our selection committee is an extremely diverse group of students from all facets of campus who represent a variety of ages, religions, races and sexual orientations, so I feel like we have a good group who is picking the concerts,” Butler said.
T-Pain’s late 2014 appearance on NPR’s popular online feature “Tiny Desk Concerts” exposed an entirely different demographic to the artist, not only without his trademark sunglasses, top hat, or dreadlocks, but, perhaps most significantly, without the help of any vocal modulation device. He has always maintained that his use of auto-tune as an instrument – which, though often attributed to him, can be traced to earlier dance club remixes – stems more from a desire to sound different than from an effort to mask mediocre vocals. Indeed, the artist’s stripped performance in the carefully constructed, now recognizable corner of NPR’s offices proves that underneath many of the bass and auto-tune laden hits permeating middle school dances of a decade ago existed a competent, even soulful R&B voice.
“He was just one of those names that we threw into the list and when we learned that he was available and the pricing was appropriate, we looked at his videos and he’s really high energy,” Kucharczyk said. “He almost has a new sound where he isn’t using auto-tune as much and he’s actually a really talented singer, so we decided that he was the one we wanted.”
Though T-Pain’s recognizable look and musical style quickly garnered him popular success and influenced other rap artists like Snoop Dogg, Lil’ Wayne and Kanye West, in recent years, the self-proclaimed “Hard & B” singer has taken strides to evolve in a new direction. In 2013, he cut his iconic dreadlocks and began working on the yet to be released record Stoicville: The Phoenix, representing a rising from the ashes and new musical chapter. The first single, “Coming Home,” contains just enough auto-tune to identify the voice as that of T-Pain, but the track maintains the integrity of his natural vocals to a much higher degree than any previous release, producing a smoother, less rap-influenced sound still committed to the catchy hooks that propelled T-Pain to fame.
After the Concert Committee reaches a consensus, the chosen artist must garner a 2/3 approval rating from the MCAB Executive Board, which includes the president, vice president, treasurer and the co-chairs of each of the five committees.
The concert budget is allocated from the student activities fee, which is divided between each committee within MCAB at the start of the year. The majority of the Concert Committee’s budget is used for the large concerts, with the rest helping to fund the new Small Concert Initiative, a program granting students the resources necessary to bring small concerts of their choosing to campus.
In the past, MCAB has sent email surveys to the student body hoping to gain useful feedback for their concert selection process. This year, the Concert Committee considered crafting a different kind of survey that allowed students to directly vote for one of the artists on the shortlist instead of responding to more general questions about their favorite kinds of music and preferred venue. Ultimately, worries that students might be divided in their choice, making the Concert Committee’s job even harder, contributed to the decision not to send a survey.
“We decided against it for logistical reasons,” Kucharczyk said. “We try to book our spring artist before December break, and this year we booked T-Pain in very early December. In the time it takes to send a survey, collect data and analyze results, prices are going up with every week, so it’s beneficial to book as early as possible.”
Since MCAB opted for a nontraditional, two-day Start of School (S.O.S.) Festival during the first weekend of the fall semester, and last spring’s Matt & Kim concert took place outside, the T-Pain performance is the organization’s first large indoor concert since the Chance the Rapper debacle of fall 2013. The event raised major concerns about the limited capacity of the concert due to a poorly chosen venue, as well as questions about MCAB’s lack of marketing, which contributed to many students claiming after tickets had sold out that they had never known they were on sale.
In addition to backlash from students who wanted to attend the concert, the potentially offensive nature of some of Chance the Rapper’s homophobic and violent lyrics caused many to question the message sent by choosing such an artist to visit the College. The use of an all-student email to relay ticket information is just one indication that the fallout from the Chance concert proved a valuable learning experience for MCAB. Butler’s first major event as co-chair of the Concert Committee was the Chance concert.
“[Chance the Rapper] definitely changed the way we both announce and address issues surrounding events,” Butler said. “We’ve had a much stronger vetting process this time looking at individual lyrics and thinking about who we want to bring. To address the whole lack of marketing when tickets went on sale, it was as simple as adding when tickets are going on sale in the all school email, which is just an easy fix second time around.”
With his short hair, clear plastic glasses and heavier reliance on natural vocals, T-Pain is taking a bold leap by evolving away from the styles that landed him at the top of the charts. His most recent Instagram photos reveal T-Pain performing for troops on a Navy entertainment tour, and in early 2014 the artist spoke out against homophobia in the rap and R&B industries, citing his frustration that producers refuse to work with the openly gay R&B singer Frank Ocean.
“We are also trying to take a more proactive standpoint in anticipating controversy, so instead of being blindsided by any complaints in terms of content we try to anticipate what may arise, and if we believe it will be an issue we can set up a forum beforehand,” Kucharczyk said.
“WRMC did a great job of setting up a forum for Big Freedia when she came,” Butler said. “We are open to hearing all student opinions and will discuss if there is a sense that the campus community desires a forum before the event. I’ve definitely learned a lot since the Chance the Rapper concert. There’s a lot that went wrong but it was also a fantastic learning experience for me, and I think we are doing a much better job this year.”
T-Pain’s performance at the College should give students the opportunity to enjoy the high-energy, auto-tune rich hits synonymous with the artist’s name while also allowing a live glimpse into T-Pain’s musical and stylistic evolution.
T-Pain will perform in the Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena on Saturday, April 18. Doors will open at 9 p.m. Tickets go on sale for $15 at go/obo on March 30 at 6 p.m.
(01/15/15 3:57am)
Getting on and off the chairlift for the first time can be terrifying. It can also be quality comedy. There is even a short film by Warren Miller, an iconic action sports filmmaker, solely devoted to the potentially traumatic experience: “Chairlift-Funny Disasters” – check it out on YouTube.
But the lift operators at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl work hard to prevent any real trauma to skiiers and boarders. Some, like Tim Kerr of Brandon, Vt. have over 20 years of experience.
“We’re kind of unique, in that in bigger areas, they have lift operators who are lift operators and snowmakers who are snowmakers,” said Snow Bowl ski-area manager Peter Mackey. “[Here], one of our operators will be making snow at night and a couple days later, working on a lift.”
According to 23-year old lift operator Stephan Kerr, snow-making is the more difficult part of his job.
“It can be dangerous,” he said. “The air hydrant can hit you with up to 500 lbs of pressure if you discharge the line incorrectly.”
Despite the inherent dangers, there is very little turnover among Snow Bowl employees according to Mackey. He explained this is likely due to the ski area’s small size and family atmosphere. Many of the lift operators also work together at the Bread Loaf campus in the summer.
In the case of Tim and his son Stephan, operating Worth Lift on a “chausty” (a hybridization of ‘chilly’ and ‘frosty’ made popular by Snow Bowl manager Peter Mackey) Sunday afternoon is quite literally a family affair.
“We have some days we like each other, some days we don’t,” chuckled Stephan. “We ride in together, so if we fight, some days are long days. But what I love about my job, especially this ski area, is how much of a family we are.”
Stephan Kerr started working at the Snow Bowl when he was 16, and has been snowboarding here since he was eight. He recalled planning his runs to rotate between lift huts to hang out with different lift operators. “I grew up here,” he said.
Given the cost of lift tickets, gear and travel, skiing and snowboarding is an ironically difficult sport to access for some Vermont residents. Foster Provencher, a Sheehan lift operator, has never skied or snowboarded in his life. Asked if he ever considered it, he replied without hesitation: “nope.”
Stephan Kerr said most of his high school friends were more into riding snowmobiles than chairlifts. “If my dad didn’t work here, I never would’ve gotten into [snowboarding]. Because he worked here, I got to take lessons for free,” he said.
Stephan was an avid snowboarder until he had a snowboarding accident at the bottom of Allen in 2011.
“I went to stop and caught an edge,” he said of the accident. “My face hit the ground, my board came up over the top of my head and flipped me on my back. I did a scorpion.” He ended up with two compressed vertebrae and a month of rehab. “[My mobility for snowboarding] is pretty limited now,” he said. “Plus my dad told me if I even grabbed my board from the closet, he’s going to stuff it up no man’s land.”
While Stephan admits to feeling a little jealous watching snowboarders shred down Allen on powder days, he’s happily taken up ice-fishing and hunting with his dad. On slow days, Stephan plays games on his Kindle (especially Game of War) or completes crossword puzzles and reads daily comics as a distraction. The lift huts also conveniently have Wi-Fi.
As for the cold, it doesn’t faze him. “We work in shifts,” he said. “Thirty minutes on, then thirty minutes off,” Stephan said. “We dress for it.” While some skiers swear by hand and toe-warmers on single-digit days, Stephan relies on steel-toed boots and his hardy local upbringing. “It’s very rare that I wear hand warmers or toe warmers. I’ve kind of known what to wear just over years of growing up here in Vermont.”
Provencher, like my shivering self, is not so immune to the feels-like-negative-22-degrees wind-chill.
“There’s a lot of nice days, but also a lot of cold days,” he said, pausing to secure the chair for me. I clumsily plopped down. As the lift begins to lurch forward, he sent me off with a little wisdom in his slow and unwavering Canadian drawl. “But you gotta take the good with the bad.”
(01/15/15 2:28am)
Getting on and off the chairlift for the first time can be terrifying. It can also be quality comedy. There is even a short film by Warren Miller, an iconic action sports filmmaker, solely devoted to the potentially traumatic experience: “Chairlift-Funny Disasters” – check it out on YouTube.
But the lift operators at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl work hard to prevent any real trauma to skiiers and boarders. Some, like Tim Kerr of Brandon, Vt. have over 20 years of experience.
“We’re kind of unique, in that in bigger areas, they have lift operators who are lift operators and snowmakers who are snowmakers,” said Snow Bowl ski-area manager Peter Mackey. “[Here], one of our operators will be making snow at night and a couple days later, working on a lift.”
According to 23-year old lift operator Stephan Kerr, snow-making is the more difficult part of his job.
“It can be dangerous,” he said. “The air hydrant can hit you with up to 500 lbs of pressure if you discharge the line incorrectly.”
Despite the inherent dangers, there is very little turnover among Snow Bowl employees according to Mackey. He explained this is likely due to the ski area’s small size and family atmosphere. Many of the lift operators also work together at the Bread Loaf campus in the summer.
In the case of Tim and his son Stephan, operating Worth Lift on a “chausty” (a hybridization of ‘chilly’ and ‘frosty’ made popular by Snow Bowl manager Peter Mackey) Sunday afternoon is quite literally a family affair.
“We have some days we like each other, some days we don’t,” chuckled Stephan. “We ride in together, so if we fight, some days are long days. But what I love about my job, especially this ski area, is how much of a family we are.”
Stephan Kerr started working at the Snow Bowl when he was 16, and has been snowboarding here since he was eight. He recalled planning his runs to rotate between lift huts to hang out with different lift operators. “I grew up here,” he said.
Given the cost of lift tickets, gear and travel, skiing and snowboarding is an ironically difficult sport to access for some Vermont residents. Foster Provencher, a Sheehan lift operator, has never skied or snowboarded in his life. Asked if he ever considered it, he replied without hesitation: “nope.”
Stephan Kerr said most of his high school friends were more into riding snowmobiles than chairlifts. “If my dad didn’t work here, I never would’ve gotten into [snowboarding]. Because he worked here, I got to take lessons for free,” he said
Stephan was an avid snowboarder until he had a snowboarding accident at the bottom of Allen in 2011.
“I went to stop and caught an edge,” he said of the accident. “My face hit the ground, my board came up over the top of my head and flipped me on my back. I did a scorpion.” He ended up with two compressed vertebrae and a month of rehab. “[My mobility for snowboarding] is pretty limited now,” he said. “Plus my dad told me if I even grabbed my board from the closet, he’s going to stuff it up no man’s land.”
While Stephan admits to feeling a little jealous watching snowboarders shred down Allen on powder days, he’s happily taken up ice-fishing and hunting with his dad. On slow days, Stephan plays games on his Kindle (especially Game of War) or completes crossword puzzles and reads daily comics as a distraction. The lift huts also conveniently have Wi-Fi.
As for the cold, it doesn’t faze him. “We work in shifts,” he said. “Thirty minutes on, then thirty minutes off,” Stephan said. “We dress for it.” While some skiers swear by hand and toe-warmers on single-digit days, Stephan relies on steel-toed boots and his hardy local upbringing. “It’s very rare that I wear hand warmers or toe warmers. I’ve kind of known what to wear just over years of growing up here in Vermont.”
Provencher, like my shivering self, is not so immune to the feels-like-negative-22-degrees wind-chill.
“There’s a lot of nice days, but also a lot of cold days,” he said, pausing to secure the chair for me. I clumsily plopped down. As the lift begins to lurch forward, he sent me off with a little wisdom in his slow and unwavering Canadian drawl. “But you gotta take the good with the bad.”
(11/05/14 6:11pm)
At the Community Council meeting on Oct. 27, Dean of Students and Community Council Co-Chair Katy Smith Abbott began the discussion by informing the council of a meeting that took place with Middlebury residents and college officials.
The neighbors of various off-campus houses complained directly to the college and posted on “Front Porch,” a neighborhood forum, complaining about the loud and destructive activities that took place on Waybridge Street over homecoming weekend.
Smith Abbott stated that neighbors “reported being very fearful for their own houses and property.” It was pointed out by some of the neighbors that signs were being torn from the ground, objects being thrown at windows, and a student lying in the middle of the street, completely passed out.
Responding to Smith Abbott’s opening, Ilana Gratch ’16.5 asked if this type of behavior was unique to this specific year. Associate Dean of Students for Residential and Student Life Doug Adams said, “It has not happened to this degree until this year…We have not had a significant concern since 2002 or 2003.”
Smith Abbott stated that many students attribute “this untenable situation with large, loud parties is the result of a lack of a social scene on campus.”
The council moved to discuss the question of whether or not Middlebury is missing the type of social life that students want. One possible solution that the council discussed was increasing the amount of registered parties on campus as an outlet for this type of partying.
Gratch said that “student social house party registration can be tedious and difficult. You have to be 21 to be the house… working the doors or being the bartender is something no one wants to do.”
The next topic of concern to the council was the ever growing popularity of app Yik Yak. Cyber bullying has led to the app’s blocking in many schools. The council discussed whether or not the administration has a responsibility to block the app at the College, in light of an article written by Jordan Seman ’16 in the Campus describing harassment she faced on the app. Many council members acknowledged that blocking the app could create another issue where students feel the administration is taking control over an aspect of their lives they should not control.
“The yaks like the one in the Campus or the one Helena was talking about are a minority,” Emma Blake, who is against blocking the app on campus, said.
Associate Professor of Anthropology James Fitzsimmons said, “I think we should ban [the app]. I don’t think it will be terribly affective because something else will pop up, but at least it will be a show of support [for Jordan].”
On Nov. 3, the council continued its conversation on the social scene at Middlebury, specifically the drinking and partying culture. Associate Dean of Students for Student Activities & Orientation JJ Boggs and Director of Health and Wellness Education Barbara McCall attended the meeting to weigh in on how best for the council to proceed on this topic.
Smith Abbott proceeded to give an overview of the meeting that took place on Sunday, Nov. 2 between students, faculty, staff, and President Liebowitz regarding the social life of students.
In regards to the question of registering Thursday night parties during J-term, Smith Abbott asked, “What would it feel like to the faculty if we (the council) made a recommendation of this kind? Is it disingenuous for us to say that we can’t? Maybe that would send a message about what we think about J-term, when it is supposed to be academic… but there is the argument that its already happening anyway so why aren’t we making it safer?”
The meeting ended with the general agreement from the council to continue the discussion on social life and get to the specifics on what types of actions they would want to take. The council is planning to hold and lead an open discussion alike to the one that took place last Sunday.
(11/05/14 6:08pm)
Each year Middlebury students apply for internships and jobs, and look to the College for support through the application process. The Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) aims to make this part of the Middlebury experience a little less stressful by creating a network of alums and providing students with job and internship opportunities described as “Middlebury-friendly.” Sites like MOJO and MiddNet help students peruse through job opportunities and contact alumni.
Jeff Sawyer, CCI Director of Employer Outreach and Development, offered some insight into the process.
“We start with understanding where the opportunities are and what students are interested in,” Sawyer explained. “And then we start to actually go out and target organizations to bring opportunities to the table.”
The CCI then invites companies or organizations to post with them. “We go out and actively encourage employers to kind of work with us,” Sawyer explained. “The preponderance of opportunities in MOJO are brought by organizations that want Middlebury students. They aren’t necessarily alums. In fact, the majority of opportunities are not sourced by alums,” although connecting students to alumni networks is one of the CCI’s strengths.
The CCI encourages alumni to get involved in their company’s recruiting processes as well as to help the CCI understand how these recruiting processes work. In addition, Sawyer admitted, the CCI asks alumni to advocate for Middlebury students if possible.
One of the biggest challenges that the CCI faces, according to Sawyer, is making students aware of the wealth of opportunities that come with their liberal arts degree – that they are capable of pursuing a number of career paths or even a number of occupations within one industry.
Career Adviser Tracy Isham echoed Sawyer, explaining that the CCI is “trying to highlight that within a sector, there’s a lot of diversity.”
After building awareness in terms of different career paths, the CCI works to make students as prepared as possible by reviewing their resumes and offering practice interviews. But not all students have had especially positive experiences with MOJO. Emily Snoddon ’14.5 shared a recent experience with the site during an application process.
“A job for an investigator position at the Bronx Defenders was posted on MOJO in early September and was due October 24th,” Snoddon explained. “The week the application was due, I reached out to an alum, Daniel Loehr, who currently is in the same position at the organization.” Loehr regretfully informed Snoddon that the company was holding their last round of interviews the next day, but encouraged her to send him her resume in an attempt to convince his supervisor to extend the process. Though Loehr’s attempt ultimately failed, he informed Snoddon that the position for which she was applying would start in November, meaning she would have been unable to accept the position regardless, since she would still be in her last semester at Middlebury. In an email to Snoddon, Loehr noted that the date posted on MOJO was the final deadline but that the organization was interviewing candidates prior to the Oct. 24 deadline.
Snoddon expressed her frustrations with the process. “To my knowledge, the CCI has never warned students of the fact that the application due date means the final day they will accept and not when the company starts to consider. Any student who applied on the date posted on MOJO would not be considered for the position, considering the final round of interviews had already occurred. Furthermore, I am not even sure they [the CCI] are aware of these facts. [Career Advisor] Tim Mosehauer sent out an email 2 days before the ‘deadline’ reminding students of this particular position. Clearly, he was not aware that the final round of interviews had already taken place.”
Similarly, Snoddon expressed her irritation with MOJO’s description of the job, as it did not list the start date as November – which would actually disqualify any student who has access to MOJO, as graduating students only have access to MOJO until September after their graduation date.
When asked about the potential deadline confusion on MOJO, Isham and Sawyer both noted that it was certainly an issue worth addressing. “I would say that there’s a culture here on this campus…of waiting,” Isham said. “One of the things that we think might be one of our communication campaigns for the future is telling students that…how do we get students to understand that you need to apply early? When you see an opportunity, not to wait until the deadline.”
Isham and Sawyer discussed the possibility of listing deadlines as “rolling” or even going so far as to post false deadlines. But ultimately they both agreed that students must be the ones to take the initiative to apply for a job that they want as soon as possible. “You don’t wait until your milk goes bad,” Isham stressed, “We don’t want our students to lose out.”
“It’s important for students to understand that’s not the way the employment world works,” Sawyer articulated. “Don’t treat it like a term paper. You want to get it as soon as you can, first come first served type of thing,” he concluded.
(10/29/14 5:58pm)
A year and a half ago I decided to take a gap year. The term “gap year” invariably implies backpacking through some countries, picking up the local tongues and doing some pro-bono work. I did a bit of that, but was never one of those hostel-hoppers you find in European cafes. Instead, I chose to do a fifth year of high school (a.k.a. a post-graduate year) in Jordan at a school called King’s Academy.
Fast-forward a year and a half later to here at Middlebury. Since my arrival, I’ve had several discussions about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s in the news often, especially after this past summer, and when it enters the domain of conversation, people become pretty impassioned. I am undoubtedly among the zealous people who are moved by the situation. In Jordan, the topic was always relevant and many of my friends were of Palestinian descent. There was understandable frustration with Israel’s existence; my Palestinian friends’ families immigrated to Jordan because of what occurred between 1947 and 2000. Much of the animosity was towards policy like the occupation and the general treatment of Palestinians in Israel, which I will get into later.
In America, we cannot truly empathize with the Palestinian struggle. Many other ethnic groups have been forced out of home countries or have fled to avoid oppression; the Jewish people are a perfect example. However, the specific suffering in Palestine is unique in its own right and we (here in the U.S.) can’t imagine how it feels to live in Gaza right now. But before talking facts and morals, about whose side to take, and how peace can be achieved, the approach to discussing the conflict needs to change. The common labels of “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine” are aggravating. Everyone with some interest in the Middle East identifies as one or the other, which is incredibly counter-productive to peace. To consider oneself pro-Israel connotes an absolute anti-Palestine mindset. It’s the mindset of ultra-conservatives in Israeli government like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who care less about Palestine or its people. They rather believe in the triumph of Israel and the eradication of anything that may inhibit Israel’s climb to hegemonic status.
Similarly, to be pro-Palestine implies a degree of extremism, believing that Israel shouldn’t exist at all. Groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah preach this rhetoric and commit themselves to the destruction of Israel rather than focusing on Palestinian sovereignty and equality. The radicals on both sides perpetuate hatred and polarize the situation in a horrendous way. Thus, to label oneself pro-(either nation) is to align with the morally reprehensible ideals of radicals. Confining oneself to such a single set of beliefs creates a precedent of obstinacy that inhibits diplomatic and political progress. To be obvious and idealistically frank, the goal should be peace and equality for the people, not one country over another because both have a right to exist.
There is an intricate and controversial background to what is now geographically Israel and Palestine but it’s not too essential in analyzing the current conflict. Regardless of how you feel about the history, Israel has been thoroughly established over the past sixty years and it’s not going anywhere. The same way Palestinians aren’t going to stop fighting to get their land back. Therefore the discussion needs to be in the present tense, about the policies and issues of today.
The match-up right now is unbalanced to say the least. Israel’s a big grizzly bear and Palestine is a squirrel throwing acorns. The death toll from Gaza this past summer was about 2,200, and about 2,100 of which were Palestinian. Moreover, to quote the political analyst recently brought by Justice for Palestine, Josh Ruebner, “Israel administered a sort of collective punishment” in Gaza that took nearly 1,500 civilian lives and demolished Palestinian infrastructure. Hamas is a dangerous threat to Israeli civilians and enemy of Israeli defense, but the military answer should not be the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages. This demolition left innocent Palestinians homeless, seeking any refuge available. UN schools were made available as safe havens but those were later bombed, too.
Israel is becoming increasingly more brutal with its treatment of the Palestinians. Those within Israel suffer from a segregation and inequality that is analogous with the former apartheid in South Africa. Those in the occupied territories seek sovereignty, but are denied freedoms of assembly and speech. This injustice should not be tolerated by the global community because if left unaddressed, what remains of Palestine will continue to shrink and nationhood will always evade its people.
Our lecturer from last week, Josh, advocated for an intense series of boycotting, divestment, sanctions to punish Israel for its unjust treatment of the Palestinians. I’m not sure that’s a bad idea because many of Israel’s policies have been utterly unacceptable. Israel is gradually annexing remaining Palestinian land, similar to Russia’s efforts in Crimea. America should criticize Israel the way it did to Russia. Perhaps if Israel’s greatest ally, America, turns its back towards them in the form of divestment, etc. we’d see more Palestinian integration and equality and a big step towards an autonomous Palestine. In turn, Israel could worry less about fighting Hamas as they treat Palestinians better because that mitigates Hamas’s case for battle.
Ultimately, extremists cannot be reasoned with, and the radicals on both sides will always demand more concessions from the opposition. I still have hope though, as everyone should, that a solution can be reached. As our generation comes to power, I envision new, progressive political parties working towards a single state. We, as future leaders, should not fight for Israel or Palestine but for justice, equality and an end to the violence.
JOSH CLAXTON '18 is from Summit, N.J.
(10/29/14 5:56pm)
President Obama claims to not be on the ballot this November; however, in a few days, we will see if voters agree with that or not. Republicans need to gain six seats in order to “Fire Reid,” the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. The field is not good for Democrats. They are mostly on defense, defending their gains from 2008. Many vulnerable incumbents and open seats fall in states that Romney won in 2012. Moreover, the GOP has recruited many strong candidates with previous experience in office. I know that there are more races going on besides the Senate races, but the House will most likely stay Republican and few gubernatorial races are as national as the those in the Senate this cycle. I refer to the Real Clear Politics Average Polls (RCP Poll Average) as of Oct. 26. The 2012 Presidential Results are from Politico.
Alaska: Begich (i) v. Sullivan
RCP Poll Average: Sullivan +4.2
2012 Presidential: Romney 55%
Prediction: Alaska has been an interesting race from the onset of this election cycle. Begich (D) is relatively popular in Alaska and overall shows great political aptitude. However, he slipped up in recent weeks after refusing to take down a recent advertisement that has been deemed offensive. This, as well as the Affordable Care Act’s unpopularity, have created a unique opportunity for former State Attorney General Dan Sullivan (R), who fought his way through a crowded GOP primary. I think Sullivan pulls this one out, but it will be close.
Arkansas: Pryor (i) v. Cotton
RCP Poll Average: Cotton +5
2012 Presidential: Romney 60.5%
Prediction: Mark Pryor (D), knew he was in trouble early on in this race. In fact, he was behind in the polls as early as March and then rallied over the summer, but has since slipped again. Arkansas has not had a good experience with Obamacare and the President has a disapproval rating of about 60.3 percent, according to the Huffington Post. Moreover, Tom Cotton (R) is no fire breather. In fact, Cotton graduated from Harvard undergrad and Law School and has served in the Army, completing two tours of duty overseas. I’m chalking this one up as a GOP victory as well.
Colorado: M. Udall (i) v. Gardner
RCP Poll Average: Gardner +2.8
2012 Presidential: Obama 51.2%
Prediction: Colorado is one of the many states Democrats didn’t think would really be in play this cycle that turned out to be tougher for them than they originally thought. Cory Gardner (R) is risking a sure congressional seat to challenge Mark Udall (D). Gardner is a more moderate GOP candidate challenging a strong liberal incumbent. However, Colorado in recent years has shifted much more to the left, supporting marijuana legalization and voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012. The state legislature even felt safe enough to challenge the Second Amendment, and that was the final straw. Two Democratic legislators were successfully recalled in 2013, which may signal that the GOP is motivated and ready to take back the Rocky Mountain State. It is important to note that Colorado’s other Senator, Michael Bennett (D), chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, so he will put up a fight for fellow Coloradan Udall. This race is too close to call, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is only one Udall in the Senate next year.
Georgia: Nunn v. Perdue (Open Seat)
RCP Poll Average: Nunn +0.3
2012 Presidential: Romney 53.4%
Prediction: This is a race to watch this November. Georgia has arisen as the Democrats biggest chance at a seat pickup this November, and even one could derail a GOP majority. Michelle Nunn (D) has a slight advantage in that her father served as a U.S. Senator from Georgia. David Perdue (R) is a businessman who is fighting attacks on his record as a business leader and CEO of Dollar General. This race will most likely go to a runoff (no candidate will receive 50 percent of the vote in November, I think). This race will then be the focus of national attention and may determine Senate control. In my mind, there are two things to consider: who will have enough resources to win and how will the runoff effect turnout? Georgia is experiencing a slight demographic shift that may benefit Nunn, and national attention may drive up turnout which could benefit her as well. This race is too close to call. I will nominally give it to Perdue, because midterm voters tend to be more skewed towards the GOP.
Iowa: Braley v. Ernst (Open Seat)
RCP Poll Average: Ernst +2.2
2012 Presidential: Obama 52.1%
Prediction: Joni Ernst (R) has stormed onto the scene and become a frontrunner in this critical Iowa Senate race. She started was a dark horse in the GOP primary, but her “Let’s Make ‘Em Squeal” ad made her a GOP rock star. She has many presidential hopefuls come campaign with her (remember: Iowa is a critical presidential primary state). Moreover, Brue Braley (D) has lost some steam. I mean, even Michelle Obama doesn’t know his name, famously telling voters to vote for “Bruce Baily.” That’s not good. Also, Ernst is a State Senator and an officer in the Iowa National Guard who has had success pitching herself to voters. Congressman Braley, on the other hand, has often come across as cold and unlikable. He has managed to insult farmers, complain about the lack of towel service in the Congressional gym during the shutdown and is generally portrayed as callous. I think Lt. Col. Ernst will defeat Congressman Bruce “Baily” Braley.
Kansas: Orman v. Roberts (i)
RCP Poll Average: Orman +0.6
2012 Presidential: Obama 52.1%
Prediction: Kansas is probably the most frustrating and confusing race of the cycle. Pat Roberts (R) could have easily walked to victory had he squashed rumors of his lack of a home in Kansas. Moreover, Greg Orman (I) may just convince voters that he isn’t a Democrat and march to victory. Orman is quite possibly the most confusing candidate out there and has been a member of both major political parties, most recently the Democrats’. He has also contributed to many Democratic campaigns, including Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s, but also to Scott Brown (R-NH) in 2010 and the famous Todd Aiken (R-MO) campaign of 2012. I have no idea where this guy stands on anything. However, Roberts is in trouble, and Gov. Brownback isn’t helping him very much heading the GOP ticket. However, the other Kansas Senator Jerry Moran (R) is the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and won’t lose Kansas without a fight. Overall, I think this race is a pure tossup. I’ll give it to Roberts, but only because he is an incumbent (and for the sake of a nice looking map).
Kentucky: Grimes v. McConnell (i)
RCP Poll Average: McConnell +4.4
2012 Presidential: Romney 60.5%
Prediction: If the Democrats win Kentucky, it would be a major victory for them because Mitch McConnell (R) is the current Minority Leader for the Republican Caucus. After fighting off a Tea Party challenger, McConnell has gained on Alison Grimes (D) and surpassed her in recent polls. It is interesting to note that in Kentucky, the state’s Obamacare Exchange has been relatively successful and may hurt McConnell, or at least take Obamacare out of the race. The big issue of this race is jobs, specifically those from the coal industry. Obama’s EPA regulations threaten Kentucky’s coal industry, and McConnell has accused the Democrats of waging a “War on Coal.” Grimes claims to support coal as well; however, she also campaigns with “coal makes us sick” Harry Reid, so it will be interesting to see who Kentuckians decide has their best interests at heart. I think Leader McConnell holds onto his seat.
Louisiana: Landrieu (i) v. Cassidy
RCP Poll Average: Cassidy +4.4
2012 Presidential: Romney 57.8%
Prediction: This is in close second for the most perplexing race of the cycle. Mary Landrieu (D) has a major name advantage in Louisiana. Most importantly, her brother is the Mayor of New Orleans. She also wields a lot of power as Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee. She has taken favorable stances for her constituents on the Keystone XL Pipeline, the Export-Import Bank, and the oil export ban. Also, Louisiana, like Georgia, can go into a runoff if neither candidate reaches 50 percent. Congressman Bill Cassidy (R) leads in the polls, but if he doesn’t break 50 percent in the first election, I think he could lose the second. Landrieu has more resources at her disposal to play a massive turnout game in New Orleans, and, if turnout is high, she could hold on by her fingernails. This is another tossup, but Cassidy could win and avoid a runoff, so I will tentatively predict Cassidy.
Maine: Bellows v. Collins (i)
RCP Poll Average: Collins +29.7
2012 Presidential: Obama 56%
Prediction: Everybody in Maine likes Susan Collins (R). She is an example of moderate and thoughtful leadership in a partisan Senate. Shennah Bellows (D) is a former leader of the Maine ACLU and also a Middlebury alumna, class of ’97. However, she doesn’t stand a chance against Senator Collins. She would have a better shot at Angus King (I) the next time he is in cycle.
Michigan: Peters v. Land (Open Seat)
RCP Poll Average: Peters +10.1
2012 Presidential: Obama 54.3%
Prediction: I really was hoping Terri Lynn Land (R) would pull out a win for the GOP. She was a successful Secretary of State, but her Senate bid has lost steam heading into the last ninety days. Congressman Garry Peters (D) will win Carl Levin’s vacated seat.
Minnesota: Franken (i) v. McFadden
RCP Poll Average: Franken +10.5
2012 Presidential: Obama 54.3%
Prediction: The funniest Senator is going to win his first reelection contest by more than 500 votes. Al Franken (D) was a writer for SNL before moving back home to run for office, but has since convinced voters that he is a dedicated and serious U.S. Senator. Mike McFadden (R) fought through a GOP primary, and the football coach may not even put up a fight at the polls. Some have called McFadden a dark horse, but I think Franken wins by double digits, no joke.
Montana: Curtis v. Daines (Open Seat)
RCP Poll Average: Daines +18 (yes, 18)
2012 Presidential: Romney 55.3%
Prediction: The Democrats pulled out all the stops to hold on to Max Baucus’ seat. Yes, they shipped the sponsor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act all the way to China so they could appoint Sen. John Walsh (D) to fill his spot. This was in hopes of giving him an “incumbency advantage,” but the Democrats put their eggs in the wrong basket. Walsh recently had his master’s degree revoked due to severe plagiarism. This sent the Democratic hopes of holding onto Montana out the window. Steve Daines (R) is going to easily win.
New Hampshire: Shaheen (i) v. Scott Brown
RCP Poll Average: Shaheen +2.2
2012 Presidential: Obama 52.2%
Prediction: This is an interesting race and, like Colorado, is another example of the GOP “expanding the map” and increasing the number of competitive races. Jeanne Shaheen (D) is a longtime political figure in New Hampshire and has previously served as the state’s governor. Scott Brown (R), on the other hand, grew up in New Hampshire, but served as a Senator from Massachusetts. Shaheen has a few problems to confront, and that may just tip the scales for Brown. Obamacare is very unpopular in New Hampshire due to drastic medical network restrictions associated with Obamacare insurance plans. Shaheen’s races have historically tightened at the finish, but she often pulls them out. I predict Shaheen will hold onto her seat.
New Jersey: Booker (i) v. Bell
RCP Poll Average: Booker +15.6
2012 Presidential: Obama 58%
Prediction: Cory Booker (D) defeated Steve Lonegan (R) in the 2013 Special Election, and that may have been his only real contest. The 2013 election produced one of the most entertaining debates I have ever watched though. So, if you don’t want to do homework, look it up on Youtube. Lots of one-liners. Previously, Booker was a controversial mayor of Newark. He faces a weak challenger and should retain his seat.
North Carolina: Hagan (i) v. Tillis
RCP Average: Hagan +1.6
2012 Presidential: Romney 50.6%
Prediction: Kay Hagan (D) has done her best to distance herself from an unpopular president, and it just may have been enough. The polls are close, but most people are saying Hagan will win, and I agree. Sean Haugh (L) may just take away enough of Thom Tillis’ (R) vote share to put Hagan over the top. Also, Tillis is the speaker of the unpopular State House. So that isn’t helping him much. I think Hagan wins.
Oregon: Merkley (i) v. Wehby
RCP Average: Merkley +13.5
2012 Presidential: Obama 54.5%
Prediction: Dr. Monica Wehby (R) is an interesting candidate; she’s a neurosurgeon and more libertarian, supporting many middle of the road social stances. However, that will not be enough to overtake Jeff Merkley (D), who should easily win.
South Dakota: Weiland v. Rounds (Open Seat)
RCP Poll Average: Rounds +10.2
2012 Presidential: Romney 57.9%
Prediction: Mike Rounds (R) is going to win, this race really was never that close. There are four Candidates in the race, two of whom will detract from making Rick Weiland (D) a true threat to Rounds’ healthy lead.
Virginia: Warner (i) v. Gillespie
RCP Poll Average: Warner +10.6
2012 Presidential: Obama 50.8%
Prediction: Mark Warner (D) is a relatively moderate Senator and former business exec. He has done a lot of bipartisan work, most notably in the “Gang of Eight” who often are the source of major compromises. He faces former RNC Chair and Bush White House Staffer Ed Gillespie (R). Warner is going to win with ease.
West Virginia: Tennant v. Capito (Open Seat)
RCP Poll Average: Capito +16.6
2012 Presidential: Romney 62.3%
Prediction: Both of these candidates initially seamed very strong, but Congresswomen Shelly Moore Capito (R) has pulled ahead. She faces Secretary of State, and former UWV mascot, Natalie Tennant (D). Tennant, however, made the mistake of bringing Sen. Warren (D-MA) to West Virginia, where she probably was less than helpful. On the other hand, Paul Ryan (R-WI) was better received. Capito will win handily.
(10/22/14 7:28pm)
The Middlebury Campus sat down with College President Ronald D. Liebowitz to discuss his time at the College. The conversation ranged from when he first became President to some of the changes he has seen at the College in the past years. Liebowitz will depart the College at the conclusion of the school year.
Middlebury Campus (MC): What was it like moving from a role as a Professor at the College to an administrator (specifically Provost and Executive Vice President), and then to the College President? What was it like, as someone within the College, stepping up to become College President?
Ronald D. Liebowitz (RL): Like many things, it had its advantages and disadvantages. In my particular case, I was a tenured member of the faculty, which means I went through the tenure process and then I served in two major academic positions before becoming president — the dean of the faculty and then provost. Having had these opportunities, I was able to learn a lot about the institution, seeing things from many angles, and working with major committees along the way, all of which was so very valuable and a real advantage for me.
The disadvantage coming “from inside” the institution is that, having had to make some tough decisions, sore feelings sometimes linger. When you come into the presidency with a history, you face some additional challenges when trying to move the institution forward. So, there are pluses and minuses to both, but I feel very fortunate to have known the institution as well as I did when I began my term as president.
MC: And I think a lot of people forget that it has only happened three times in the College’s history.
RL: Yes, I like to remind people who are not knowledgeable of Middlebury’s history that the college has had a president from within three times in 214 years – once in the 19th century with Ezra Brainerd, once in the 20th century with John McCardell and me in the 21st century, so maybe that means we can expect outside presidents for the next 85 years!
MC: Do you think your background as a specialist in political geography influenced the projects that you have embarked on during your time as President? Examples include new schools abroad, new language programs, and Monterey.
RL: I have never given this much thought. I think my background as a Russianist and also as a political geographer had some impact but I would like to think that most academics today, regardless of one’s discipline, would see the changing world in which we live and how that relates to the type of education that our students need and by which they would be best served. I would hope that most academics would see the direction we’ve taken as complementary rather than in competition with a traditional liberal arts education and reflects the changes external to Middlebury and higher education in a smart and beneficial (to our students) way.
MC: Where do you hope to see Middlebury’s relationship with Monterey go in the next decade or so?
RL: I’ve been fairly consistent about this since 2005 – I don’t believe that programmatic (academic) integration can and should be forced where it does not make sense. The great attraction of Monterey was that, while Middlebury and Monterey shared an underlying commitment to linguistic and cultural competency, it was such a different institution from our undergraduate liberal arts college. The differences open up many opportunities for students to engage in courses and programs, plus meaningful engagement with MIIS faculty, whose philosophy about cultural competency is similar to our faculty’s, but whose curricular content and pedagogy are so different from what our students have here on campus. We are not a professional, graduate school – we’re not even a pre-professional undergraduate school! We are a liberal arts college – and the juxtaposition and the complementarity of these two is powerful for those students interested in international careers.
That said, Monterey and its programs are not for everyone. They are intended to be for those students who want to pursue international-related careers. But beyond the obvious complementary curricular opportunities, there is another benefit that comes from the collaboration: the strengthening of the “Middlebury” network. About 30-35 percent of Monterey students are international students (the majority from Asia), and most graduates go on to work all over the world. By expanding our alumni network to include Monterey alumni, faculty, and staff, we strengthen the Middlebury network, which helps current students and recent graduates by opening doors to internships, employment opportunities, and meaningful connections across the globe. This is an often overlooked benefit of our relationship with Monterey. My hope, then, would be that students take advantage of the opportunities to combine a professional international education offered at Monterey with their undergraduate traditional liberal arts experience to the benefit of their post-college plans; that they would use the resources that Monterey offers for both advanced degrees and a robust, international-oriented network.
MC: On the topic of the undergraduate experience, in the time that you’ve been here, how do you think the student body has changed? Have you seen changes in the typical Middlebury student?
RL: The student body has changed over thirty years, yet the influence of the institution itself on each generation of students remains stronger than any specific change I might highlight. One example: a characteristic of the student body that I noticed immediately upon arriving at the College is that students are incredibly civil towards one another. We have disagreements, altercations, and skirmishes for sure. Yet, the culture here is very forgiving to individuals who in other environments would face far greater challenges. I suspect this is because the student body as a whole recognizes that over their four years here each member of the larger community is going to rely primarily on the 2,450 other undergraduates for one’s intellectual, social, and cultural sustenance. On campuses in urban areas or at institutions with a graduate population, this might not be the case; the environment is different. Here, though, the undergraduate experience is not diluted, it’s a close-knit community, and this cultural aspect has remained a constant and has been present for a very long time. It is something that first-years learn early on so by the time they are sophomores, juniors, and seniors, they themselves pass this on to incoming first-years.
There’s a flipside to this characteristic of the Middlebury culture. Although ours is a very smart student body, many faculty see less “mixing it up” intellectually in class than one might find at a Columbia, a Harvard, a Yale, or a Wesleyan – places located in more urban environments. If this is true, I believe it’s a fair trade-off. I think without the cultural characteristic of students being civil toward one another, less competitive, more supportive, and more collaborative, a lot would be lost here in terms of the overall quality of the educational experience for students.
But to your question, what has changed? The student body has become a lot more socioeconomically, culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse. Though we strive for greater diversity still, those of us who have been here a long time see great changes on this front. When I first got here, about 1 in 20 students were American students of color or international; now, that ratio is greater than 1 in 3. That’s a huge change. We know that a more diverse student body translates into a richer educational experience as a result of students sharing different perspectives and life experiences both inside and outside the classroom.
Other changes: students today are obviously more conversant with technology. They are more apt to volunteer not only in town, but across the country (alternative break service trips) and across the globe. And many of my colleagues report students are more visibly focused on jobs and employment, which is understandable given the changed financial circumstances they face at graduation than 30 years ago. So there has been change, yet the overall dynamic of the student body – being supportive of one another, collaborative, and open-minded – remains and still is the general feel one gets here.
MC: I want to talk a little bit about the carbon neutrality initiative, the Franklin Environmental Center and the Solar Decathlon entries as examples of how Middlebury has become an environmental leader in the past 10 years. Is there one achievement that stands out to you from all those?
RL: No, not really. In the last 10 or 11 years during my time as president, a number of notable things have occurred and the spotlight should be on the students; in almost every case the students have been at the center of these initiatives.
The whole idea of carbon neutrality at Middlebury didn’t start with the administration and it didn’t start with the Board of Trustees; it started with a student back in the 1990s who shared his work from a senior seminar and passed it on to younger students interested in climate change and environmental stewardship. About a decade later, when the Sunday Night Group formed, students in that group were the ones who brought forward the proposal for the institution to reduce its carbon footprint and eventually to pursue carbon neutrality. Some Middlebury faculty worked with students to fine-tune their pitch to the administration and eventually to the Board of Trustees. Their presentation was excellent: they admitted when they couldn’t answer a question and pledged to get the answer to the Trustees later (and they did); they had a deep command of the issues; and succeeded in getting the trustees to adopt their resolution, which was never a foregone conclusion. Seven years later, with the coming implementation of our bio-methane initiative, we are almost there – becoming carbon neutral without purchasing any offsets.
For the Solar Decathlon, the idea was first proposed by my wife, Jessica, and with the guidance of faculty and staff in the sciences and environmental studies, the students more or less took over the project. The institutional commitment was significant to support the effort, though the rest was on the students, and they showed remarkable maturity in overcoming some real challenges that they had never encountered in their traditional liberal arts education. It was not just about the academic challenge or learning about solar power, renewable energy, engineering, and more; it was also a huge challenge of working together as a team, respecting one another, accepting opposing views, and compromising on so much along the way. We don’t have a graduate program in engineering, or even an undergraduate engineering program. Nor do we have a graduate school of architecture, and so the students had to rise to the occasion to learn things on the fly and they did. Yes, they were mentored by faculty and staff in a significant way, but they needed to use their skills and knowledge gotten in the classroom to draw on the expertise from around the state of Vermont to help them as well.
If you go through almost every environmental initiative over the last 20 years – the start of recycling, the establishment of our composting program, sustainability initiatives, biomass gasification, carbon neutrality, real food, plus others – most have been student-led or the idea was student generated. I think that’s the key thing that we should take away and really applaud: that the institution is a leader in sustainability, but that wouldn’t be the case without the students.
MC: When you stepped into the role of College President in 2004, did you think about what you wanted your legacy to be when you eventually depart?
RL: I think almost every President probably steps in saying, “If I could leave the institution in a stronger position upon departing than when I began, I’ve done well.” All the more when one inherits an institution of the quality and stature of a Middlebury. I think what has made these last 10-11 years so interesting has been our need to recognize, for really the first time in many decades, the external forces that have created some great challenges for higher education, including Middlebury. If I would have been told in 2004-05 that we would face the worst recession in a century just 3-4 years later, I would have said, “Wow, what are we going to do?” You don’t plan on such an occurrence – higher education financial models seem to show variables all moving in the positive direction, year after year, and fail to include stress tests or “worst case scenarios.” And, there is no blueprint or plan sitting in a desk drawer in the president’s office awaiting you when an issue of this magnitude arises.
It is easy to ignore the external pressures mounting on higher education and continue with a “business as usual” approach to operations, but such an approach will no longer do. I believe getting some tough issues on the table for discussion and action, no matter how much people wish to ignore them, is an important part of the past 10 years.
MC: On the subject of the recession in 2008, can you talk about what it meant to manage that crisis?
RL: The most challenging thing about the recession was that we didn’t know when it might end. We needed to judge and judge early, the level of cuts we would need to make in order to address what we had estimated would be $30 million 4-5 years out, yet it could also have been worse: we just did not know. Since compensation amounts to roughly half the institution’s budget, it was clear the only way to make real headway into a projected deficit would be to address staffing. But when you make a decision to reduce staffing through layoffs, it can be devastating to a small community if it is not handled well and with great sensitivity. Though we knew we needed to reduce staffing, we didn’t know how many jobs needed to be cut.
In the end, I thought the institution – faculty, staff, students, administrators, alumni, trustees – did a remarkable job because we were one of the first schools, if not the first school, to engage our community, letting them know that it was likely we would need to begin a process to determine how best to address the economic crisis. We didn’t have any specific answers or recommendations, of course, but we tried to prepare the community for a process that would result in significant cuts. The challenge at that early date was the unkown: how much would our endowment drop? How would our students’ families be affected? How many people’s financial situation would change? So the greatest issue was the unknown - not knowing when the crisis would end.
I think back to the changes the recession brought to other institutions and I am grateful we were able to preserve what our students, faculty, staff and alumni told us was most important to them for us to preserve. Though there were some differences among the priorities for each group, everyone emphasized that we needed to avoid involuntary layoffs: that was the biggest concern among all the groups. As a result, we offered voluntary and early retirement programs for staff and faculty through which medical coverage continued until age 65 and individuals received payments that provided security and were based on years of service. Between 2009 and 2011 about 110 staff positions were eliminated through these programs, and 12 faculty colleagues chose to retire early. We also reduced services at Atwater (no meal-plan dinners and only a continental breakfast); reduced significantly catering options for departments; reduced some budgets between 5 percent and 10 percent; froze salaries except for the lower end of the pay scale; and increased the size of our student body by 50 to provide more revenue to make up for the endowment decline.
However, the alternatives to our major cutbacks were severe. Some peer institutions ended need-blind admissions, others had to delay library and science center projects, and still others cut faculty positions. We didn’t freeze the size of the faculty and in fact added 11 new faculty positions as was planned, we had no involuntary layoffs. We did not sacrifice the excellence of our academic program.
Moving early and decisively, having feedback from so many constituencies through the extensive surveys, and being able to focus on what was most important to each of the groups helped us to come out of the recession as well as we could have hoped.
MC: Are there other difficult choices that you had to make in your time here that come to mind?
RL: There have been a number of challenging or difficult choices surrounding policies, but that is to be expected. The Monterey opportunity, allowing military recruitment on campus, accepting a gift to create the (Chief Justice) Rehnquist endowed professorship, and establishing Middlebury Interactive Languages stand out. All of these represented contested issues, and a lot of the differences in opinion, in my view, stemmed from the different time horizons that a president and board must take when considering opportunities and institutional direction. Students, faculty, and staff, if I can generalize, tend to view things in the shorter-term – those things relevant to a student’s four years here, or for faculty and staff what is related to the here and now or to one’s career. A president and Board must look beyond that time horizon to project what is in the best interest of the institution long term. Some disagreements are rooted in true philosophical differences (e.g., “what is the relationship between a liberal arts education and our students’ finding jobs after graduation?”), yet I would say there is greater agreement than there are difficult and contentious debates. The difficult issues, however, bring out passion and sometimes anger, and sometimes overshadow all that we do agree on as an institution.
(10/01/14 6:09pm)
You may already know about my campaign to get Heinz ketchup in all of our dining halls. Between the WeTheMiddKids petition, the go/heinzforall posters, and my somewhat unconventional ketchup solicitation in Atwater last week, I feel as though “Heinz Girl” has become something of a campus character. For those of you who remain unaware of my motivations, you may rest assured that my Pittsburgher passion is wholly in earnest. After three years of avoiding the vinegary Hunt’s tomato concoction in Ross and Proctor and then discovering this year that the Heinz containers in Atwater didn’t have Heinz in them at all, I decided to act.
Am I, as WeTheMiddKids commentator Smylez so eloquently put it, just an “overzealous yinzer?” I’ve never believed in doing anything halfway, but this nascent insurgency has so far cost me a whopping $6 on posters, $3 on a bottle of ketchup, and three hours walking around Atwater and talking to some very wonderful people in my effort to convince you of Heinz’s superiority. In the sad event that you missed the Heinz giveaways last week, I’ve got some fun facts for you. Almost 1.2 million people like Heinz Ketchup on Facebook. Compare that to the paltry 105 who like Hunt’s Ketchup. Yep. More people live in Battell than like Hunt’s Ketchup on Facebook. More people work for Hunt’s than like Hunt’s Ketchup on Facebook. They probably even secretly stock their pantries with Heinz!
Social media popularity contests aside — and it is difficult to ignore a difference to that degree of magnitude — even the experts agree that Heinz is the best. In a 2004 New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “the taste of Heinz’s ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo.” Wouldn’t you like to experience such gastronomic perfection every time you have a French fry in the dining hall?
There are so many things I care about more than ketchup — improving maternal health outcomes, formulating better language curricula for children in American public schools, the plight of Syrian and Iraqi refugees and IDPs, the social and academic wellbeing of my Middviewers, and whether the Steelers will recover from this 2-2 start to the season. But now that I’m in my final year here, I’ve come to realize that we often take ourselves far too seriously, and that the little things can affect us just as much as grand issues. Wherever ketchup falls on your list of priorities, if seeing my posters or watching me administer impromptu taste tests has made you crack a smile or even laugh, I absolutely count that as a victory. Whether or not I achieve the ultimate victory in this campaign, however, depends on your support. Vote now for Heinz ketchup, that king of the condiments, at go/heinzforall.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
KATHARINE REINEMAN '15 is from Pittsburgh, Pa.
(04/16/14 4:06pm)
Last week’s Op Ed piece on “Connecting the Dots with CCI” raised some valid points but also included some misrepresentation of the facts. The invitation from The Campus to respond and help set the record straight prompts me to take advantage of this space to do a little “myth busting” and provide a sense of what the Center for Careers & Internships is up to these days, all in the service of 2500+ students who could not be more diverse in their four-year paths to their post-graduate pursuits.
We get what students want and think they need, and we are working hard to deliver on that. But what do we want? We are ambitious for our students and ambitious for our center. It is our goal to create a signature career education planning experience that is interwoven throughout the undergraduate years and provides ample guidance and opportunity for exploration, reflection, and decision-making. We’re looking for students to be partners in the process. To be engaged with CCI early and often. To be open to possibility. To stop deleting e-mails when they may have just ignored an opportunity of a lifetime. To understand that it is their future to embrace — and that planning for it needs to be as much a part of their undergraduate journey as choosing their major, studying abroad, playing a sport or volunteering.
We have a deeply committed staff here to work with students throughout their time at Middlebury, from their first semester to Senior Week (and beyond!) to provide advice on opportunities; review cover letters and résumés; conduct practice interviews; offer self-assessment tools; run workshops, career action groups, career conversations, and employer information sessions; and much more. In the spirit of encouraging independence, exploration and aspiration, we are working hard to engage students earlier in their time at Middlebury to make the process of personal and career development less stressful, more intentional and even exhilarating. It’s a partnership we are striving to develop with each and every student on this campus.
President Liebowitz, Dean Collado, the Board of Trustees and College Advancement could not be more supportive in their commitment to make real-world experience a touchstone of a Middlebury education. Three summers ago, the College provided approximately $125,000 in internship funding; this summer it approaches the half-million-dollar mark. And in terms of overall experiential funding provided directly to students (including PCI, URO, academic departments, etc.), last year College support hit $1.5 million collectively, primarily for summer and Winter Term experiences.
There is not a career center among liberal arts institutions in the country that is not undergoing or considering profound change in how it best serves students (and future employers). Conversations about the cost and relevance of a liberal arts education are occurring on campuses everywhere. Despite economic recovery, graduates still must address an uncertain job market. Students face pressure from family members who challenge them on “what in the world can you do with a history — or fill in the blank — degree” (by the way, for a great answer, check out go/alumprofiles). Employers still laud the benefits of hiring interns and employees who are the product of a liberal arts education but bemoan their lack of practical experience and even workplace etiquette — not to mention unrealistic expectations for a first job. Parents and students carry a greater debt load than ever. Most faculty continue to support traditional pedagogy, acknowledging that internships have their place — but never as a credit-worthy extension of the classroom experience. So, what’s a Career and Internship Center to do?
Here are a few steps we have taken already. Last year, the College created a new Director of Employer Outreach & Development position, with Jeff Sawyer joining us this summer. We have already added 25 new employer organizations and 125 new “Midd-friendly” opportunities to MOJO, ranging from the arts to media & entertainment to healthcare. We have developed an in-depth plan for future development in this area that addresses both the interests of Middlebury students and “where the jobs are.” To complement these efforts, we have created several new programs. “UpNext” (which debuted in February with a focus on Media & Entertainment), brings together students, employers and faculty over two days, building student awareness of the breadth of pathways within various industries and to help them prepare to compete for these opportunities. The “Field Guide” series works with departments to bring back alumni for panel discussions on the paths they took to a wide range of careers (in the spirit of “major doesn’t necessarily equal career”), followed by a dinner for further in-depth conversation and advice; the first was held in March with the Geology Department, with one student saying that “this event was the single most practically valuable experience we have had at Middlebury.” We currently have finance advisory and mentoring groups that include both monthly phone calls and ongoing individual summer meetings in New York and Boston. In addition, we’re working with the new “Middlebury in DC” office to set up a mentoring program for our summer DC interns with young alums. And we’re in the process of setting up two new advisory boards in Technology and Media & Entertainment, again to provide a network of real-world advice and mentoring.
One initiative in our efforts to meet students “where they are” is to hold drop-in hours and appointments in BiHall, in the Commons and in the evenings. We have also reached out to academic departments to meet with faculty to determine how we might work together to connect their majors to career exploration in special evening working sessions; our work with the Psychology Department is a great example of such a collaboration. In September, we will be launching a new integrated and inclusive advising model, providing students with highly individualized and cohesive academic and career advising. This focus will increase the depth and breadth of our individual advising content expertise, improving the quality and relevance of our programming, our outreach efforts and our work with faculty and students. In addition, a new online appointment scheduling system will enable students to make their own appointments with the advisor best suited to their needs. But we will still serve those students with the quick question and those who are in exploratory mode, the many “undecideds,” looking for general advice. CCI will never become a place just for those who already have determined their paths.
Some other clarifications regarding concerns voiced by the Campus:
Opportunities in areas other than finance and consulting are hard to find on MOJO — and when do, they are often outdated: We have posted more than 500 internships this year (a new record) in every field. The Campus mentioned just a “smattering” of postings, with particular concern about the lack of media opportunities, yet there were more than 100 postings in Media & Entertainment alone this year, including dozens of new ones at NBC Universal, ABC Disney, Sports Illustrated, CBS, The Christian Science Monitor, PBS, and more. And the comment that MOJO postings are often outdated by a few years — that’s impossible, as all postings are automatically deleted from the system within two days of the application deadline.
We’re out of touch when it comes to internships and student needs in terms of funding deadlines: Over the last four springs, we’ve gone from one deadline to three to two and now back to one again. Despite advice throughout the year regarding starting the internship search early, so many students wait until the last minute. Because we are responding to student feedback for full funding to be awarded (i.e., in their bank accounts) by June 1 to enable them to buy airline tickets, put a deposit down on a sublet, etc., we therefore need to have hundreds of applications reviewed by staff and faculty committees and then multi-step paperwork processed and pre-departure workshops held — all done in time to hit that June 1 goal and which necessitated the April 6 deadline. It is no easy feat — and it’s worth noting that it was very clear in the Funding FAQs that if there were extenuating circumstances, a student just needed to e-mail or meet with me to discuss — as a result, 20 extensions were granted. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that our funding has more than tripled in three years and the number of students supported quadrupled. It is also worth noting that paid internship postings on MOJO have increased by 50 percent in the last two years. And one last point: students who got their unpaid internships through MOJO absolutely do not receive funding priority as stated in the Campus piece.
The deluge of e-mails and why we need a weekly newsletter instead: Two major points here: 1) We do have a weekly newsletter — it’s called CCI Connect (visit go/connect), and it is sent out every week to all students and department coordinators, with all new MOJO postings, upcoming deadlines and events, etc., and is categorized by industry field. 2) The recent deluge of e-mails is due to the number of deadlines tied to the end of “internship hiring season” — and both student surveys and focus groups told us that students wanted to be reminded of upcoming deadlines three days in advance. Believe me, we would love to eliminate these e-mails and all the work they involve and have students use their weekly CCI Connect as their primary source of information on opportunities. But the fact that the Campus editorial board didn’t even know of its existence demonstrates why the reminders are important — and that we need to do a much better job in communicating about our resources.
CCI has limited effect with the exception of a few fields: Since September, we’ve had 2,500+ student visits in drop-ins and appointments, with interest in every field. On the recruiting front, we held 80+ employer info sessions in a variety of industries and 29 related special events, with more than 400 on-campus interviews to date. Our record number (500+) of MOJO internship postings in every field has generated 2,900 applications to date. More than 2,600 students have attended a variety of dozens of CCI workshops and programming, including a series of sophomore dinners focusing on summer internships, LinkedIn workshops, The ABCs of Finding Work in the Government, Grant-Writing for Not-for-Profits, Preparing for Your Finance Interview, The Business of the Arts, and many more
We are happy to respond to constructive criticism and welcome new ideas on how we can better work with students and faculty to “connect the dots.” But we ask that the critique and ideas reflect an accurate understanding of what is already in place and what lies ahead. Meanwhile, on behalf of my CCI colleagues, I’d like to remind students that there is nothing we would rather do than work with them throughout their time at Middlebury on the creative process of inventing their futures.
PEGGY BURNS is Director of Internships and Interim Director of the Center for Careers and Internships
(04/16/14 2:48pm)
If you wanted to get an Adderall prescription written for you while at the College, you would need to go through a person like Dr. John Young, who works at the Counseling Service of Addison County. He is the consulting psychiatrist for the College and is on the front lines of the complex issue of prescribing psychostimulants.
“It is one of the more complex assessments diagnostically,” he said. “The problem is that sometimes it is a diagnosis of desire — ‘I read a book, I tried someone’s Adderall and it worked for me, I think I have ADHD.’”
The problem with diagnosing ADHD is that there are few black and white cases and no blood test to confirm lack of focus. As a result, Dr. Young tries to get to know the patients and looks for red flags.
“You want a good reason, not just performance enhancement. When I meet with someone, I’m trying to get an idea of what they’re looking for, if they’re looking for treatment more broadly, and whether they’re willing to accept that there are a lot of different ways their problem might be addressed. The more they focus on this medicine, that’s a red flag for me.”
Young said he sees on average 10 Middlebury students a year looking for psychostimulants. Less than half he believed actually needed the medication.
“I once had a Middlebury student in my office stand up and slam the door because he didn’t get the medicine that he thought he needed,” Young said. “It’s a tricky thing because usually they’re suggesting it, and it’s very hard to talk people out of that because it is a simple answer, it’s something that works now.”
But for every student he declines to prescribe, there may be a doctor back in their hometown more than willing to prescribe them enough Adderall for them and their friends.
“There’s too much of it around, and people are being pressured by their friends to give it out. I guess it’s just part of things now, but I don’t have to like it,” Young said.
But for Oliver ’13, who graduated last spring with an economics degree, easy access psychostimulants were a common convenience during his time at the College, similar to coffee.
“I really use it for midterms and finals. There’s pretty much no work that can’t be helped by Adderall or any other stimulant.”
Oliver readily admitted that he showed none of the symptoms of ADHD and saw Adderall as a vehicle to get him where he needed to go.
“It’s just another tool that people use and will continue to use no matter how difficult you make it,” Oliver explained. “It’s the cost of doing business. You can’t breed this go-getter culture and not expect students to take advantage of their resources, whether it be coffee or Adderall. To me, they are both performance-enhancing supplements. Coffee is legal, but at the end of the day, it helps you get the paper done.”
Conventionally, Adderall and other psychostimulants are meant to level the playing field for students who are not able to focus and need the medicine. But Oliver does not buy that argument.
“I’m sure those people [with serious ADHD] exist, but I’m skeptical that the majority of people prescribed here actually qualify as people who would need the medication to level the playing field,” he said. “If we’re talking about my rationalization process, I’m thinking of me with it and me without it, and at the end of the day, I’m not going to feel bad because I know how many other kids do it. I don’t mind being on an unfair playing field and I’m not going to leave an advantage on the table.”
Oliver’s views on Adderall usage were seen as “worrisome and sad” to Dean of the College Shirley Collado. To her, psychostimulant abuse is a symptom of a larger problem.
“A major concern is the culture where students feel they need to take a drug like Adderall inappropriately,” Collado said. “It signals an inability as a person to press pause, slow down and make mistakes. I wonder what the long-term cost will be when I think about a Middlebury student if you fast-forward 25 years, what the impact of that thinking and rationalization is.”
With a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University and over 12 years working as a higher education administrator, Collado has a unique understanding about psychostimulant usage and the larger trends it suggests.
“We are all contributing to creating a high-intensity situation here. But Middlebury is only one version of a high-impact environment, and my worry is that for students who are learning to cope by taking a drug, what the trend is going to be for the long term.”
While most students the Campus talked to began their psychostimulant usage at the College, Collado pointed to a new wave of applicants who are being stimulated and pushed to their maximum from young ages.
“There’s a lot of evidence of how readily these medications have become,” she said. “Parents who are fine with getting their kids on medication when they are in middle school, trying to make their kids as focused as possible so they can get into a place like Middlebury.”
“Behind the story is the context of a new pharmaceutical reality that a lot of psychologists worry about. The drugs are legitimate ways of coping for students who really need it, but I’m worried about the culture that we are currently in where there is an abundance of these drugs,” she continued.
Every expert the Campus talked to was asked to respond to Oliver’s assertion that Adderall use was the cost of doing business at a place like Middlebury. Reactions were overwhelmingly of concern and alarm, except for one.
“I think that is very insightful,” said Assistant Professor of Sociology Rebecca Tiger. “Adderall helps you be better at what we are asking you to do. We ask you to do a ton of work, have a fit body, fit mind, do all sort of extra-curricular activities, engage in community service, and have a good social life. Adderall can help you with that, so what is so wrong with it?”
Tiger, who has taught classes on the sociology of drugs and deviance and social control, refused to weigh in on whether drugs like Adderall are good or bad, but was quick to note what she sees as hypocrisy in what is considered “bad.”
“What I find really interesting is that students would never compare Adderall to crystal meth,” Tiger explained. “For the students I’ve talked to, they always say: ‘well, it’s not crystal meth.’ But actually, yes it is. This isn’t about drugs, we’re talking about people. If I am a good, high functioning person, and I occasionally take Adderall, who cares? But if I am a poor, rural person who is out of work, then we really care if I am taking amphetamines and criminalize it. You guys are rarely criminalized for your drugs use.”
...
For Tyler ’14, it was a slow, seamless transition from taking Adderall as a study drug once during his first-year to regularly taking it to study and party starting junior year. At first he just got a pill here and there from a friend, but as his use increased he transitioned to buying from a campus drug dealer. If he buys smaller quick-release Adderall, it is $1 for 2mg. Extended-release XR pills are discounted, but not by much.
“Before, it was only when my friends had some, a crime of opportunity. Now, there’s a person I buy from. It’s expensive, but worth it to me.”
The numbers of students at the College using psychostimulants recreationally is unknown, and the estimates vary greatly depending on the anecdotal source. Tyler estimated that 50 percent of students who take it orally eventually try it recreationally.
“You can justify it as a study enhancer by arguing that it’s for work,” he said. “A lot of people get into the drug by justifying it that way, but the recreational use doesn’t have that safety net. Usually people don’t start snorting it until they have done it a couple times orally. It comes on slowly. You try it, you like it, then move on.”
Tyler said snorting Adderall makes him more attentive in conversations, allowing him to live up to social expectations. But despite his best efforts to keep the pills he buys for studying, Tyler said he ends up snorting more than he intends every month. The dealer he buys from usually sells out, so he has to go at the beginning of the month. In the beginning of March, he bought $60 worth — 120mg — but only used 50mg to study with.
“I’m like a goddamn child when I have it,” he said. “I can’t keep my hands off of it. Especially if it’s a night when we’re going out, I’ll just bust out the Adderall. I have to be strategic or I’ll pop them like candy.”
One of the biggest frustrations is that Tyler rarely snorts it all himself.
“It’s annoying to me when my friends just don’t want to go through the process of buying Adderall. I can’t fault them for it, because I am much better friends with the guys who sell it, so I’ll just go kick it with them and buy Adderall.”
Tyler’s monthly sojourns to his drug dealer put him in the minority of illicit users. Over 73 percent of the respondents obtained Adderall and other psychostimulants from either “Close friend/Sibling” or “Friend,” according to the 2013 report on psychostimulants by Ben Tabah ’13.
As his thesis has come to a head mid-way through the spring, Tyler continues to buy Adderall on the first and the fifteenth when needed. While he said he has come to terms with his own usage, he was unsure when asked whether he would let his kids be prescribed Adderall.
“If I had a child who showed symptoms of ADHD and was in a position to be prescribed Adderall, I would think long and hard about it. Not to say that I would or would not, but I would do a lot of research because an Adderall prescription is something that fundamentally affects your day-to-day interactions.”
...
When you follow a group of students over the course of a semester, there are always nascent trends that do not have data to support and cannot be definitively proved. But among long-term prescribed students, there is a subset that has had enough, and decided that the side affects just are not worth the rewards.
Going into his senior year this fall, Ben ’14 was juggling a long-term relationship with prescription stimulants. His brother and sister were both prescribed growing up, and he began taking psychostimulants in ninth grade. He was given Focalin and Adderall and brought it with him to the College, taking it regularly.
Insomnia and loss of appetite hit Ben particularly hard. He arrived at the College 5’10 and 150 lbs. and left at the end of his first year a skeletal 135 lbs. When he finally finished all his work, the battle to find a few hours of a sleep began.
“Nyquil was the only thing that could knock me out. I would write a stream of consciousness during those sleepless nights, writing things like ‘wow this Adderall won’t go away.’ Pages and pages. You get to the point where you just ask yourself what the hell your doing,” he said.
“People would always joke, ‘you like working, Adderall makes work fun.’ Try taking it for two days, then leaving the library wanting only to sleep and not being able to because your mind is racing and won’t stop.”
Ben would take a pill, enter the library, and exit ten hours later feeling as if his head was in a cloud.
“I felt at times like I was a guinea pig, and no one could really understand where I was coming from,” he recounted. “I started thinking when I turned in papers coming off my Adderall high, ‘who was doing that work? Me or the drugs? Am I really in control?’”
The long days and longer nights brought him to a moment of crises.
“I haven’t been able to get a handle on it,” he said late in the fall. “When my parents came up this past weekend, I told them not to ship me another bottle.”
As he progressed through his senior year, Ben began to learn how to cope without the drug. It was harder to do work, but he said the benefits far outweighed the cost, from smoking less weed to a reinvigorated sex life. But it remains a constant battle.
“My brain keeps telling me to call my mom, hop in the library, and just start knocking work out,” he said. “But I don’t want to do that right now. I’m at the point of deciding what I want to do with my life and what role Adderall is going to play in that life.”
During spring break, Ben took it sparingly to try and push through his thesis. He said it helped immensely, but the side affects were especially severe because he had no tolerance. Returning after break, Ben continued to lay off psychostimulants.
Ben is not alone in taking a hard look at long-term psychostimulant usage.
“They’re not miracle drugs,” said John Young, the Middlebury-based psychiatrist. “A lot of people find that in the long run, after the initial excitement wears off, it might not be more helpful than a cup of coffee.”
After graduating, Oliver went to work at an investment bank. While he used Adderall for his junior summer internship, he too has decided against taking psychostimulants.
“You want to be seen highly at work, but you can only do so much in one day, while one test in a math or economics test could be worth 40 percent of my final grade,” he said. “There’s no six-hour period of time at work where it will be worth 40 percent of my evaluation.”
But even if there are students re-evaluating the long-term worth psychostimulants, there will always be a project or midterm beckoning on the horizon, tempting students across campus.
“I’m the Dean of the College coming in and saying, ‘take a chill pill’ (no pun intended),” Collado said. “This is the time to invest in yourself away from your parents and have it be messy some of the time. It’s normal for students to explore drugs and all kinds of things in college, but if that is the normative culture that a student is walking into, that is highly problematic. My biggest concern is that you are equipped with the right tools, confidence and reflection so that you are not creating behaviors here that will be detrimental to your future as a person.”
The problem with living in the Adderall Generation is that you cannot just divorce yourself from these drugs altogether. As Ben learned, there is no such thing as cold turkey for students taking psychostimulants at the College. But you can learn to use the drugs responsibly and come to terms with their role here. For better or worse, from 30mg extended-release Adderall pills with breakfast to Saturday nights driven by neon blue and orange lines, we are living in the Adderall Generation.
“If you walked up to any random person on campus and offered them Adderall, not many of them would say no,” said Ben. “But I’m trying to find a way to live my life in a way that nobody understands. Kids who take Adderall regularly never talk … [but] we need to start talking and reflecting.”
Listen to Kyle Finck discuss this series on Vermont Public Radio.
Additional Reporting by ALEX EDEL, Layout Assistance by HANNAH BRISTOL, Graphics by EVAN GALLAGHER, and Photos by ANTHEA VIRAGH
(04/09/14 4:55pm)
Middlebury students are connected by no more than two degrees of separation: you either know someone or know someone who knows that person. Though there are many great things about this smallness, I always thought it presented a romantic disadvantage.
The main reason: the gossip-mongering that roars into life at Sunday brunch. I didn’t mind hearing about others’ travails, conquests and failures. I just dreaded being the topic of conversation. So I did what I think most of us do: I built an emotional bunker, sheltered from the embarrassments of casual romance.
I never hoped to squat in this self-imposed “shelter” alone. I preferred the security of solitude to the risks active pursuit, searching for someone whom I might never find, whom I might find only to be ruthlessly rejected by. This school is too small; any rejection would effectively be public. Beyond the indignity of seemingly everyone knowing about my failure, I would be consigned to awkward run-ins until one of us finally goes abroad or graduates.
My limited, slanted consideration of only the potential downsides left me preferring passivity. I reasoned, something will happen if it’s meant to. After all, it never rains on the man who stays indoors.
But the sun never shines on the man who stays indoors. I changed my mind: sitting in my bunker waiting for a perfect relationship to bust through the boarded window is insane. The truth is that if I want to date, I’ve got to be proactive. Even if my fears of the small-school rumor mill are legitimate, I stand to lose most if I let those fears inhibit me.
There will always be convenient excuses to blame our dateless evenings. At a certain point, we each individually bear the responsibility of overcoming these minor adversities. In the case of this particular excuse, that “Middlebury is too small”, we have the chance to reframe the matter. This school isn’t too small, it’s fortuitously “not too big”.
The truth is, we don’t actually know everyone on campus. Certainly, I know a lot of names but I don’t actually know much about the individuals themselves. What’s more, the reality is that the people you’re most likely to date are neither close friends nor complete strangers, but loose associations. Our lives here are blessed with a preponderance of date-potential acquaintances.
My friends at bigger schools have resorted to matchmaking apps like Tinder. Even here, nearly a quarter of Middkids have registered profiles on Friendsy (although many may be curiosity-serving, but functionally defunct like mine). The difference, though, is that we don’t have to rely on services like Friendsy to find people of interest. We have the chance to use Middlebury’s smallness to our romantic advantage.
Consider the notion that our community’s insularity might be a blessing in disguise. You don’t meet wonderful women only to have them dissolve back into the labyrinth of New York City; you get plenty of chances to see them again. Ask a friend for an introduction. We can only win if when we take on a little risk.
(04/09/14 4:42pm)
Geert Wilders, the leader and founder of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), appeared proudly before his loyal following in The Hague on Wednesday night, still hoping that the local elections would solidify his political power. Against the backdrop of a Dutch flag spanning the entire backside of a medium-sized beer cellar in the political capital of the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders asked his boisterous audience three questions.
“Do you want more or less European Union?” The audience, familiar by now with Mr. Wilders’ crusade against the ever-closer cooperation of European nation-states—he has suggested violent rebellion if the EU gains powers of taxation—responded with a somewhat scattered but loud “Less! Less! Less!” The crowd repeated the word 13 times. Wilders, building momentum, continued with the precise eagerness of a hunter who is about to corner his prey. “Do you want more or less Labour Party?” The Dutch Labour Party (PVDA), it had become apparent before Mr. Wilders entered the room, had lost political control over Amsterdam, the Dutch capital and most populous city with roughly 800,000 inhabitants, for the first time since coming to power in 1949. Even Wilders’ disciples, whose confused populism combines leftist and rightist conservatism, seemed to commiserate with the social-democrats. “Less! Less! Less!” they uttered just eleven times.
Wilders, visibly in need of a brief recovery after the underwhelming response, looked down on his bright green tie, then turned his eyes to the floor, before prefacing his third question with an expression of acute awareness of what his next move would bring about. “And the third question is…and I’m not actually allowed to say this, because I will be reported to the police… But freedom of speech is an obvious good. We haven’t said anything illegal. Nothing that is not true. So, I ask you. Do you want, in this city and in the Netherlands, more or fewer Moroccans?” This time, the ensuing chant was reminiscent of the response Joseph Goebbels elicited in his Berlin Sportpalast speech of February 10, 1933, which offered the national-socialist ‘solution’ for Germany’s Post-WWI pains. Mr. Goebbels, who served as Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda between 1933 and 1945, racing in the rhythm of his rhetoric, assured his audience that “the Jewish insolence has lived longer in the past than it will live in the future.” The crowd laughed derisively, applauded, and clamored, with many rising to their feet to extend their right arm at a 45-degree angle.
The congregation of Wilders-devotees in The Hague responded in unison to the question on the presence of Moroccans—a group that makes up about 2% of the total Dutch population—yelling “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” The chant lasted a total of 16 repetitions of the word (‘minder’ in Dutch). Basking in the success of his kill, Mr. Wilders observed his surroundings, wetted his upper lip twice with his thin tongue in a gesture that completed his unnerving resemblance to a colubrid, and assured the Dutch on national television that “we will take care of that, then.” The crowd laughed derisively, applauded, and clamored.
As Mr. Wilders would find out soon after his address, the Dutch midterm elections forced the Party for Freedom, which thrives on the populist appeal of Mr. Wilders—he is the party’s only member—to surrender political dominance in all but one municipality. Having previously suffered significant defeat in the Dutch national elections of September 2012, Mr. Wilders differs much from Minister Goebbels in terms of executive power. That is not to say, however, that his populist rhetoric has failed to make an imprint on Dutch politics. Mr. Wilders’ hard-right campaign against European integration, Islam and ethnic groups brought him as far as holding a position of de facto governing power when the PVV served as the supporting party for the 2010 minority coalition of the Dutch Conservative Party (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA). Today, Mr. Wilders’ 15 seats in the Dutch lower chamber still see him represent 10% of the total population. Far more problematically, Mr. Wilders’ influence has pulled the Conservative Party (VVD) closer to demagoguery and xenophobia, and has successfully normalized anti-EU, anti-immigrant, and nationalist discourse in Dutch politics.
But for all the negativity that has surrounded the Dutch midterm elections, their outcome also holds the promise of a reversal in the populist trend of the past 10 years. Mr. Wilders’ speech has provoked public outrage among the Dutch, leading one PVV parliamentarian to cut all ties with the party on Thursday afternoon. As of Thursday night, over a thousand Dutchmen have reported Mr. Wilders’ discriminatory remarks to the police. Perhaps even more promisingly, Prime Minister Rutte (VVD), finally collapsing under the weight of party elders and European peers, announced late Thursday night that he has ruled out the possibility of forming a coalition government with Mr. Wilders if he maintains his views.
Finally, Democrats 66 (D66), the only Dutch party that has consistently refused to accept the Mr. Wilders’ brand of populism as tolerable political practice, emerged from the local elections as the undisputed victor, becoming the largest party in three of The Netherlands’ most populous cities: Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht. The progressive centrists of D66-leader Alexander Pechtold will seek to translate this local power to a widening influence on a national and European scale. To a large extent, the Dutch reputation for religious tolerance depends on how successful Pechtold is in meeting his challenge.
FELIX KLOS '14 is from Hilversum, The Netherlands
